Skip to main content
Main

A LA Battleship Maine

Fried oysters coated in egg and cracker crumbs, served hot.

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

Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

A LA Battleship Maine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from oysters and place them in a thickly folded napkin to dry.

  2. Season oysters with pepper and salt.

Fry

  1. Heat butter and lard in a thick-bottomed frying pan.

  2. Dip each oyster in beaten egg and then in fine cracker crumbs until coated.

  3. Fry the oysters in the hot grease until golden brown, turning them with a broad-bladed knife.

  4. Serve crisp and 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender interior inside a crisp coating.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the oysters so the coating stays on during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form the crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the frying fat and helps it brown.
Lard
Provides a hot frying fat that crisps the coating evenly.

The step that matters

Drying the oysters. Excess moisture on the oysters turns to steam in the hot fat and can loosen the coating. Drying them well helps the crumbs stick and fry crisp.

“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.

More fried oysters recipes

Mock 7Breaded 4Philadelphia 3 See all 440 →

You might also like

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