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Oyster Salad

A salad of fresh oysters mixed with chopped celery and dressed with hollandaise or salad cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,886 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Oyster Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Drain the oysters from their liquor.

  2. Cut them in halves or quarters.

Assemble and dress

  1. Mix with the chopped celery.

  2. Pour the dressing over the mixture.

  3. You can use half lettuce and half celery or tender white cabbage instead.

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

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

  2. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Oyster + celerytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,131 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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, savoury flavour of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and freshness that contrasts with the soft oysters.
Hollandaise dressing or salad cream
Adds richness and moisture, coating the oysters and celery and binding them together.

The step that matters

Drain the oysters from their liquor. Liquid left with the oysters dilutes the dressing and makes the salad watery, so the dressing does not coat the pieces properly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Macefits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, cream. 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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