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Soup

Oyster Plant Soup

A creamy soup made from sliced salsify, milk, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,395 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oyster Plant Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the salsify in boiling water until tender.

  2. Add the milk, butter, flour, allspice, mace, and bay leaf and stir until it boils.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Let it stand for 10 minutes on the back of the stove.

  5. Remove the bay leaf and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its distinctive vegetable flavour.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and adds richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and velvety.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Allspice berries
Contributes warm, aromatic spice notes to the milk.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils. Flour thickens milk only when heated to a boil, and stirring keeps it from settling and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Once the starch has thickened the liquid, the soup turns smooth rather than lumpy or pasty.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, milk, butter, flour, allspice, pepper):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, butter, flour, allspice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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