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Five Small Raw Oysters

Raw oysters served on their shells with optional lemon, cracked ice, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Five Small Raw Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place 5 small raw oysters on their deep shells to retain the liquor.

  2. Just before serving, place them on each plate.

  3. If oysters are out of season, substitute with small round clams.

  4. If the weather is warm, rest the oysters on a bed of cracked ice.

  5. Add a quarter of a lemon to each plate.

  6. Serve red pepper on the side with clams.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 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
Served raw, so their texture and briny flavour make up the dish itself.
Lemon
Its acidity brightens the briny flavour of the oysters.

The step that matters

Place the oysters on their deep shells. The deep shell holds the oyster's natural liquor, which keeps the flesh moist and carries its briny flavour. Placing them carefully keeps that liquid in the shell until serving.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper. 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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