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Fricasseed Oysters

A French oyster fricassee made with oyster liquor, corn starch, lemon, nutmeg, butter, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters and liquor

  1. Drain the oysters.

  2. Heat and strain the oyster liquor.

Make the fricassee

  1. Thicken the liquor with corn starch until it resembles drawn butter.

  2. Boil the mixture once, then add the oysters and cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, nutmeg, butter, and egg yolk.

  4. 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 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 and provide its savory, briny flavor.
Corn starch
Thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce, adding richness and body as it thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and rich flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oysters.

The step that matters

Remove from heat before adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens and can curdle or scramble if it gets too hot. Stirring it in off the heat lets it enrich the sauce smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, corn, nutmeg, egg, butter. 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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