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Breakfast and Supper

A stew of oysters in cream or milk with butter, salt and cayenne, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Breakfast and Supper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Strain the juice from the oysters placed in the colander into a stew pan.

  2. Let it come to a boil.

  3. Remove the scum and a clear liquor will remain.

  4. Turn cold water upon the oysters and rinse thoroughly.

  5. Add the oysters to the liquor, with a cup of cream or milk, butter, salt and cayenne pepper.

Prepare the toast

  1. Have ready buttered dice-shaped pieces of toast upon a meat dish.

  2. Toast the bread very quickly, dip each slice in boiling water (a little salt in the water).

  3. As soon as you have toasted it, spread it with butter; cover and keep hot as you proceed.

  4. Make milk toast in the same way, keeping the milk at nearly boiling heat.

  5. Spread the butter on the bread after it is dipped in hot milk, rather than melting it in the milk.

  6. Thicken what milk is left with a little corn starch, and pour over the toast when sent to the table.

Serve

  1. Pour the oysters over, garnish with parsley, and serve hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

63Calories
1 gProtein
6 gFat
3 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Home for the Friendless (Chicago, Ill.). 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. See the original page.

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 + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 (in the method)
Form the main body of the stew, providing the dish's briny flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the stew liquor.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat and richness, and gives the toast a golden, savoury coating.
Corn starch (in the method)
Thickens the leftover milk so it coats the toast rather than running off.

The step that matters

Remove the scum and let the liquor clear. Skimming the foam as the juice boils leaves a clear, clean-tasting liquor. Boiling too hard or skipping the skimming leaves the stew cloudy and scummy.

“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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