Skip to main content
Main

Scrambled Eggs with Oysters

Scrambled eggs cooked with anchovy butter, paprika, and diced oysters, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scrambled Eggs with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the butter with the anchovy paste.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the salt, pepper, and paprika.

Cook

  1. Melt the anchovy butter in a chafing dish over medium heat.

  2. Pour in the eggs and stir slightly until the mixture begins to thicken.

  3. Add the diced oysters and stir gently.

Serve

  1. Serve from the chafing dish with fingers of toasted bread, buttered and spread with anchovy paste.

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

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

  2. Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft, tender curd that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and carries the anchovy flavour through the eggs.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a tender bite to the eggs.
Anchovy paste
Adds a deep, salty savoury note that complements the oysters and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs gently as they thicken. Eggs set from liquid into curds as their proteins coagulate under heat. Stirring only slightly while they begin to thicken keeps the curds soft and moist, while overcooking squeezes out liquid and makes them dry and rubbery.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes