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Oyster Fritters

Fried batter with oysters, made from oyster liquid, milk, eggs, flour, and fried in beef dripping or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Oyster Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Open the oysters and strain the liquid into a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and beaten eggs to the oyster liquid.

  3. Stir in enough flour to make a smooth but thin batter.

  4. Add the oysters to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat beef dripping or butter in a clean frying pan and season with a little salt.

  2. When boiling, drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pan, ensuring each has an oyster.

  3. Cook until one side is a delicate brown, then turn each fritter to brown the other side.

  4. Serve hot on a dish.

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. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and the bite inside each fritter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the fritters set and hold their shape when fried.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the oysters and forms the fritter's body.
Milk
Thins the batter and adds moisture and tenderness to the fritters.
Beef dripping or butter
Fries the fritters, conducting heat and adding fat that browns the surface.

The step that matters

Drop the batter into boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly on contact. If the fat is too cool, the fritters soak up grease and turn heavy and greasy instead of crisp and golden.

“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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