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Oyster Pie

A savory pie filled with oysters, cream, butter, and eggs, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and drain them.

  2. Place the oysters between clean napkins to dry.

  3. Pour half the oyster liquor into a saucepan, season with salt, and stir in the cream, butter, and a little Cayenne pepper.

  4. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and mix with enough bread crumbs to cover the pie.

  5. Season the bread and egg mixture with Cayenne pepper and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the sides of a pie dish with pie crust, add the oysters, and pour the hot liquor over them.

  2. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top and cover with a lid of pie crust.

  3. Cut an opening in the center of the top crust and decorate with paste flowers or leaves.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is done, then serve hot.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 main filling and provide the briny, savoury flavour of the pie.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the hot oyster liquor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and mouthfeel in the liquor sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the bread crumb layer.
Grated cracker
Adds bulk and a crisp, toasted texture when baked.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the oysters. Excess water from the oysters would thin the liquor and make the crust soggy during baking, so the oysters should be well drained and dried before assembly.

“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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