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Fricasseed Oysters

A creamy oyster dish with a white sauce, lemon, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then add salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the oysters, cover the pan, and shake occasionally until the oysters are plump.

  3. Drain the oysters and keep them warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the drained liquid with enough cream to make 1 cup.

  2. In a saucepan, make a white sauce using 2 tablespoons butter, flour, and the oyster-cream mixture.

  3. Add lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Beat the egg until light, then pour the sauce over it.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters to the sauce, heat gently, and serve on toast or in patty cases.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 that becomes plump and tender when gently cooked in the butter.
Egg
Beaten egg enriches the sauce and thickens it when heated gently.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a white sauce by gelatinizing its starch.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and forms the roux base for the white sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the sauce over the egg gently. Adding hot sauce to beaten egg too quickly can scramble the egg. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the egg smooth and evenly thickens the sauce.

“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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