Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Patties

A savory dish of oysters mixed with cream and flour, formed into patties and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,886 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Bring the cream to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk and stir into the boiling cream.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Add the oysters, which have been boiled in their own liquor for a few minutes and drained.

  5. Boil once more.

Serve

  1. Fill pattie shells.

  2. 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. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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

  5. 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
Provide the main flavour and tender texture of the filling.
Cream
Forms the rich, smooth body of the filling and adds moisture.
Flour
Thickens the boiling cream so the filling holds together.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling cream. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred in well. Mixing it first with cold milk creates a smooth slurry that thickens the cream evenly.

“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.

You might also like