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Oyster Stew

A stew of oysters cooked with cream or rich milk, butter, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Oyster Stew

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the oysters and their liquor in a saucepan.

  2. When they begin to boil, skim off any foam.

  3. Add the cream or rich milk and seasoning.

  4. Stir in butter to taste.

  5. Pour the hot liquor over the oysters and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main briny flavor and the tender bite of the stew.
Cream or rich milk
Adds fat and body, giving the broth a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, buttery flavor to the broth.

The step that matters

Watching the oysters as they begin to boil. Oysters cook quickly and turn rubbery and shrink when overheated. Skimming at the first boil and keeping the stew from boiling hard helps them stay tender.

“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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