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Oysters on Half Shell

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pecans and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 93 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Oysters on Half Shell

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Shuck the oysters and place them on the half shell.

  2. Serve with unfired crackers and ripe olives.

  3. Prepare stuffed peppers and serve alongside.

  4. Include pecans and chestnuts as sides.

  5. Serve sun-cooked corn as a vegetable.

  6. Finish the meal with ice cream and fig and nut cake.

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. Pecans + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Chestnut + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  3. Olive + chestnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Olive + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Olive + pecanstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together716 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, olive, pepper, chestnut, corn, cream, fig):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, olive, pepper, chestnut, corn, cream, fig. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More oysters on the half shell recipes

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