Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Oyster for Chafing Dish

A creamy oyster dish served on toast, made with butter, flour, cream, egg, and oysters, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Oyster for Chafing Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the chafing dish and melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg lightly and stir it into the cream.

  4. Add the cream mixture to the butter and flour.

Finish and serve

  1. When hot, stir in the oysters.

  2. Serve on toast when the oysters curl.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor while the flour cooks into it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Sweet cream
Forms the body of the sauce, giving richness and a silky texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when combined with the cream.
Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture once gently heated in the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters when the sauce is hot. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked. Stirring them in once the sauce is hot, and serving as soon as their edges curl, keeps them tender and juicy.

“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.

More creamed oysters recipes

on Toast 8 See all 117 →

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes