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Angels on Horseback

A dish of oysters wrapped in bacon and herbs, fried and served on hot bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Angels on Horseback

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the frying oil.

  2. Sprinkle the bacon squares with herbs and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Place an oyster on each bacon square, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and roll them up.

  2. Skewer the rolled oysters and fry until the bacon is cooked.

  3. Serve each fried oyster on a slice of hot fried bread.

  4. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the centre of each bundle and become tender and juicy when fried.
Bacon
Wraps the oysters and renders fat that crisps and flavours them as it fries.
Fried bread
Soaks up fat and juices and gives a crisp base under each bundle.

The step that matters

Fry until the bacon is cooked. Oysters cook quickly and turn firm and rubbery if overheated, while the bacon needs enough time to render and crisp. Keep the oil hot but not smoking and watch closely so the oysters stay plump.

“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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