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Creamed Oysters with Cheese

A creamy oyster dish flavored with cheese, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and cream, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add the grated cheese and stir until melted and smooth.

  3. Mix in the tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and cream.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters and stir until creamy.

  2. Gently fold in the oysters and cook until the edges curl.

  3. Serve immediately on buttered toast.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ketchup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it a smooth, rich, creamy body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the sauce stay smooth and creamy.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture once cooked until the edges curl.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the cheese melt smoothly.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the oysters and cook until the edges curl. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Cooking only until the edges curl keeps them tender and juicy in the warm sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, ketchup, sauce, cream, oyster):

  1. Horseradishbetter flavor fit
  2. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  3. Onionbetter flavor fit
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, ketchup, sauce, cream, oyster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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