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French Stewed Oysters

A savory stew of oysters cooked in butter, flour, mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

French Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Place the oysters in a pot over medium heat with their liquor and skim the surface.

  2. Once they begin to simmer, remove them with a perforated ladle and transfer to cold water to plump.

  3. When cold, place the oysters in wine and then drain them.

Make the sauce

  1. In the oyster liquor, add the butter pieces rolled in flour, mace, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper. Stir until the butter melts and is well mixed.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked gently so they stay plump and tender.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and body, and melts smoothly into the liquor.
All-purpose flour
Coats the butter pieces and thickens the liquor into a light, smooth sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks set and can curdle or scramble if they are exposed to high heat, so they should be stirred in after the pot is removed from the heat to keep the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper, 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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