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A French Fricassee of Oysters

A French fricassee of oysters cooked in brown butter with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A French Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. In a saucepan, combine the drained oysters, salt, and pepper. Cover and cook gently, stirring occasionally.

Make the brown butter

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it browns slightly, being careful not to scorch it.

  2. Once the oysters are plump and tender, add the lemon juice to the brown butter.

Serve

  1. Pour the oysters into a serving dish and drizzle the hot sauce over them.

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, which turns plump and tender when gently cooked.
Butter
Browning gives the sauce a nutty aroma and rich, fatty flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brown butter sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the butter until it browns slightly. Butter solids darken quickly once they start to brown, so heat must be moderate and the pan watched closely. Scorching turns the milk solids bitter and ruins the sauce's nutty flavour.

“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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