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Vegetable Oyster Cakes

Vegetable oyster cakes are fried cakes made from mashed oysters, sour milk, flour, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Oyster Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil and mash the oysters.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sour milk and baking soda.

  3. Add enough flour to create a batter.

  4. Stir in the beaten eggs and the mashed oysters.

Fry

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the mixture in hot lard until golden brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during frying.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda, helping the batter rise and turn tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Gives the batter body and structure so the cakes hold their shape.
Oysters
Provide the main flavour and are distributed through the batter when mashed.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the cakes absorb fat and turn greasy instead of forming a crisp golden crust. Frying in hot fat sets the outside quickly so the inside stays moist.

“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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