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Oyster Duxelles

A dish of oysters topped with a mushroom duxelles sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Duxelles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Place the oysters in a saucepan over high heat until they begin to ruffle, then remove and drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, cook the mushrooms in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir until slightly colored.

  3. Gradually add the hot oyster liquor, stirring until thick and smooth.

  4. Simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, then stir in the beaten egg yolk, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  5. Add the oysters and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on rounds of hot buttered toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and the tender texture of the dish.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the duxelles base.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while cooking the mushrooms.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth, stable sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot oyster liquor, stirring until thick and smooth. Adding liquid to flour gradually while stirring keeps starch from clumping into lumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the sauce becomes smooth and holds together.

“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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