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Fricasseed Oysters

A French oyster fricassee made with oysters, oyster liquor, corn starch, lemon, nutmeg, butter, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters and heat it in a saucepan.

  2. Skim the liquor and thicken it with corn starch until it resembles thick drawn butter.

Cook and finish

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the oysters and cook for about 3 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice, nutmeg, butter, and egg yolk.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

Corn starch
Thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth, glossy sauce as it gelatinises when heated.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and body when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oysters.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by coagulating when heated, so if the sauce is too hot it can curdle or turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat before adding the yolk lets it enrich the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, corn, nutmeg, butter, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, corn, nutmeg, butter, egg. 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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