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Stewed Oysters

A stew of oysters cooked in their own juice with butter, cream, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil and strain the juice of the oysters.

  2. Return the juice to the pot and add butter, cream, pepper, and salt.

  3. Wash the oysters and add them to the juice.

  4. Let the mixture just come to a boil.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the stew.
Oyster juice
Gives the broth its briny, savoury base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the broth.

The step that matters

Let the mixture just come to a boil.. Oysters firm up and toughen when overcooked, so the mixture should just reach a boil and no further. Rapid boiling can also make the cream separate.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, cream, 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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