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Celeried Oysters

Oysters cooked with celery, butter, sherry, and spices, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celeried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the chopped celery and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the oysters, salt, and cayenne, and let simmer for 3 minutes.

  4. Pour in the sherry and simmer for 2 minutes longer.

  5. Serve the mixture on toast.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together785 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, whose delicate flesh cooks quickly and turns firm in a short simmer.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the celery and oysters through the pan.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid helps form the simmering sauce around the oysters.
Celery
Contributes a fresh, savoury aroma and a slight crunch to the finished mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer the oysters gently. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked. A gentle simmer for a short time cooks them through while keeping them tender and juicy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, pepper, sherry. 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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