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Creamed Oysters on Toast

A creamy oyster sauce served over hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Wash and drain the oysters.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  4. Slowly add the milk while stirring continuously until thickened.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters and salt, and bring to a gentle boil.

  2. Pour the mixture over hot buttered toast and serve immediately.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 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. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Oysters
Main ingredient, providing the briny flavor and tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, with flour, forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Liquid that becomes the creamy body of the sauce once thickened.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk while stirring continuously. Adding milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Starch granules swell as the sauce heats, so pouring too fast or stopping to stir can leave lumps.

“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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