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Minced Oysters a LA Crouton

A dish of minced oysters sautéed with butter, celery, and a creamy corn starch mixture, served over croutons and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Minced Oysters a LA Crouton

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Hash the oysters and place them in a sauté pan with butter and hashed celery.

  2. Braise for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Mix corn starch with sweet cream and egg yolks, then whip the mixture well.

  4. Pour the mixture into the oysters, stirring continuously for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on top of puff pastry or toasted bread croutons and garnish with chopped parsley.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main body and briny flavour of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the oysters braise.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they cook, giving the filling a smooth, set texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream mixture so it holds together rather than running.

The step that matters

Pouring the egg mixture into the oysters. Stirring continuously while the egg yolks and starch heat helps them thicken evenly without scrambling or curdling, giving a smooth filling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, corn, cream, egg, parsley, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, corn, cream, egg, parsley, bread. 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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