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Oyster Bouillon

A clear oyster broth flavored with celery seed, mace, bay leaf, paprika, and butter, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Bouillon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the oysters finely.

  2. Put the oysters and 1 cup of boiling water into a double boiler.

  3. Add the celery seed, mace, bay leaf, salt, and paprika.

Make the bouillon

  1. Heat for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain through a double thickness of cheesecloth, pressing to extract all the juice.

  3. Return the liquid to the double boiler.

  4. Add the butter and reheat.

Serve

  1. Serve in warmed bouillon cups, adding a spoonful of whipped cream to each portion.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and savory body of the broth as they simmer in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished broth.
Whipped cream
Adds a cool, rich contrast and softens the hot broth at serving.

The step that matters

Straining through cheesecloth. Oyster liquor can carry fine grit and shell fragments; a double layer of cheesecloth, pressed gently, catches them while letting the clear juice through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, celery, butter, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, celery, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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