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Oyster Salad

A chilled oyster salad mixed with mayonnaise or tartare sauce, served on lettuce and garnished with olives, capers, pickles, and optionally celery or cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Cook the oysters in their own liquor until plump, about five minutes.

  2. Drain the oysters.

  3. Chill the oysters.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the chilled oysters with mayonnaise or tartare sauce.

  2. Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.

  3. Garnish with olives, capers, or pickles.

  4. Optionally, serve with finely cut celery or tender young cabbage.

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. Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Capers + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the salad and provide its briny, savoury flavour.
Mayonnaise or tartare sauce
Adds moisture and richness, binding the chilled oysters into a creamy mixture.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool bed that contrasts with the creamy oyster mixture.
Olives
Add salty, briny notes that sharpen the flavour of the salad.
Capers
Add sharp, acidic bursts of flavour that cut through the richness of the sauce.
Pickles
Add acidity and tang that balance the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cook the oysters in their own liquor until plump, about five minutes.. Oysters overcook quickly; heating them only until they plump keeps them tender rather than tough and rubbery. Cooking in their own liquor keeps the flavour concentrated.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sauce, lettuce, olive, capers):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, lettuce, olive, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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