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Fried Oyster Plant

A fried cake made from oyster plant, milk, butter, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the oyster plant and soak it in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Boil the oyster plant until tender, then drain and let it cool.

  3. Mash the cooled oyster plant with a wooden spoon, removing any fibrous parts.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Wet the mash to a paste with milk and mix in a little butter and 1½ beaten eggs for each cup of oyster plant.

  2. Season to taste, form into round, flat cakes, dredge with flour, and fry until light brown.

  3. Drain off excess fat and serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oyster plant
Forms the bulk of the cakes and provides the main flavor and body.
Eggs
Bind the mash together so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Milk
Wets the mash into a paste that is soft and easy to shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the cakes brown when fried.
Flour
Dries the surface of the cakes and helps them brown and crisp in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes until light brown. The cakes are soft and held together mainly by egg, so they can break or absorb too much fat if the pan is not hot enough or they are handled roughly. A flour coating and steady heat help form a crust that holds the shape and keeps the interior from becoming greasy.

“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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