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Oyster Fritters

A fried dish of oysters mixed with flour, butter, mushrooms, egg yolks, and oyster liquor, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Oyster Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the oysters in hot water for five minutes, then chop them finely.

  2. Mix the chopped oysters with the strained oyster liquor.

  3. Heat the mixture to a scalding point.

  4. Stir in the flour and butter. Mix until smooth and thick.

  5. Add the chopped mushrooms and beaten egg yolks. Season with salt and pepper.

Shape and cool

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered platter and let it cool until firm.

  2. Cut the mixture into slices.

  3. Wrap each slice in thin bacon.

Batter and fry

  1. Dip each wrapped slice in batter.

  2. Fry the battered slices in hot lard.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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
Provide the main flavor and, once chopped and cooked, the bulk of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the mixture with starch so it becomes smooth and firm enough to slice.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mixture a softer, more tender texture.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure as they set with heat.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until firm before slicing. The flour starch and egg yolk proteins set as the mixture cools, so cutting too early makes slices fall apart. Cooling fully before slicing keeps the shapes intact through dipping and frying.

“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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