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Oyster Patties

Fried oyster patties made with a batter of sour milk, eggs, flour, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk, eggs, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in flour until the batter is thick.

Coat and fry the oysters

  1. Coat each oyster in the batter.

  2. Fry the coated oysters in butter until golden brown.

Form and fry the cakes

  1. Combine oysters and their liquor with rolled crackers.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 15 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Form into small cakes with 1 or 2 oysters in each.

  5. Roll the cakes in dry cracker crumbs until well coated.

  6. Fry in hot lard and butter until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Serve hot and keep covered.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set when fried.
Sour milk
Adds tang and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to lighten the batter.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the oysters.
Oysters
Main ingredient, supplying the flavor and filling of each cake.
Rolled crackers
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture into cakes.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat until nicely browned. Hot fat sets and browns the cracker coating quickly, so the cakes are crisp outside while the oysters cook through without drying out. Fat that is not hot soaks in grease and can make the cakes fall apart.

“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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