Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Oysters

Steamed oysters served with a butter, milk, and cracker sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Steamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Steam the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters and place them in a deep dish in the steamer.

  2. Steam the oysters until they shrivel.

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, heat the water until it scalds, then skim it.

  2. Add the milk and butter, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Crush the cracker finely and sprinkle it into the mixture, letting it scald together.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the steamed oysters and serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked gently by steam until they shrivel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mixture a smooth, rounded flavor.
Cracker
Starch from the crushed cracker thickens the milk mixture as it scalds.

The step that matters

Letting the cracker scald into the mixture. Crushed cracker must be finely crushed and stirred in while the liquid is hot so its starch can hydrate and thicken evenly. Added too coarsely or too cold, it stays lumpy or thin.

“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

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes