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Dessert

Oyster Short Cake

A baked pastry filled with oysters, served with a gravy of remaining oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shortcake

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, butter, salt, and enough sweet milk to form a dough.

  3. Roll the dough to about 1 inch thick and bake on tin pie plates until golden.

Make the oyster filling

  1. In a pot, combine oysters and water, and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper, then add to the boiling oysters.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the cakes are done, split them open and fill with oysters, adding some on top.

  2. Serve remaining oysters in a gravy dish for replenishing.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure and thickens the sauce when combined with butter and milk.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in both the dough and the gravy.
Oysters
Provide the main filling and their briny flavor to the dish.
Milk
Moistens the dough and, with flour and butter, forms the creamy gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the milk-butter-flour mixture to the boiling oysters. Flour mixed into liquid can clump if added without being whisked smooth, and adding it to a rapid boil can scorch the bottom of the pot. Keeping the sauce at a gentle simmer while stirring gives a smooth, evenly thickened gravy.

“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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