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Creamed Oysters

A dish of oysters topped with a butter, flour, and milk cream sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters and toast

  1. Boil the oysters in their own juice until cooked.

  2. Prepare 12 slices of toast.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour until blended.

  2. Gradually add a small amount of warm milk to the butter and flour mixture to thin it.

  3. Pour the mixture into 1 pint of boiling milk, stirring constantly to prevent scorching.

  4. Once thick and smooth, add the oyster juice.

Serve

  1. Place an equal number of oysters on each slice of toast and cover with the cream sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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
Provide the main flavor and texture of the dish, cooked in their own juice.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the body of the cream sauce, giving it a mild, creamy flavor.
Bread
Serves as the base of toast that holds the oysters and sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Flour thickens smoothly only when the roux is well blended and milk is added gradually while stirring constantly. Stopping stirring lets the starch clump and the milk scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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