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Oyster Patties

Oyster patties are baked pastry shells filled with a boiled oyster mixture thickened with butter, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells

  1. Make a rich pie paste and bake it in patty pans.

Make the filling

  1. In a pot, combine oysters and enough liquor to cover them.

  2. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add butter and cream, then thicken with flour.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked pastry shells with the oyster mixture just before serving.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 tender texture of the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Pie paste
Forms the crisp, baked shells that hold the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the filling with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and to swell and thicken fully. Adding it without enough heating or stirring can leave lumps or a pasty flavor, and overheating after the cream goes in can cause the mixture to split or toughen the oysters.

“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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