Skip to main content
Main

Oystees and Bacon

Oysters wrapped in bacon and baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oystees and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the pepper, salt, and lime juice together, then lay the oysters in the mixture.

  3. Cut the bacon into very thin strips, about 1 inch wide and 3 inches long.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll the bacon strips and thread them onto a skewer, alternating with an oyster until the skewer is full.

  2. Place the skewers on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the bacon and oysters off the skewers onto a hot dish.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Oyster + limetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture when cooked briefly.
Bacon
Wraps the oysters, adding salty, smoky fat that browns as it bakes.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the oysters and bacon.

The step that matters

Baking the skewers. Oysters cook quickly and can turn rubbery if overbaked, while the bacon needs enough heat to render and crisp. Watching the skewers closely keeps the oysters juicy and the bacon done.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Limethe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, 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.

More bacon-wrapped oysters recipes

on Toast 5 See all 61 →

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes