Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Pie

A puff pastry crust filled with oysters, butter, spices, and egg yolk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Pie

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 the pastry

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

  2. Butter the inside of a deep dish.

  3. Line the deep dish with thickly rolled puff pastry.

  4. Prepare another sheet of pastry for the lid.

  5. Place a clean towel in the dish to support the lid.

  6. Add the lid and bake until golden.

Make the oyster filling

  1. While the pastry bakes, clean the oysters.

  2. Drain the oyster liquor into a pan.

  3. In a skillet, add the oysters with just enough liquor to prevent burning.

  4. Season the oysters with whole pepper, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, and minced celery.

  5. Add butter bits lightly dredged with flour.

  6. Simmer the mixture without boiling.

  7. Beat the yolks of 3 to 5 eggs.

  8. Stir the beaten yolks into the oyster mixture a few minutes before removing from heat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once the pastry is baked, remove the lid.

  2. Fill the dish with the oysters and gravy.

  3. Decorate the lid with pastry leaves and a knot.

  4. Bake the lid again.

  5. Serve warm or cold.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main filling and their briny flavor that defines the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enriches the gravy and carries flavor.
Flour
Lightly dredged onto the butter, it helps thicken the oyster gravy.
Egg yolks
Stirred in near the end, they enrich and thicken the gravy to a silky texture.
Puff pastry
Its layers of butter and dough bake into a flaky, crisp crust that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten yolks off the heat-level simmer. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but scramble and turn grainy if boiled, so the mixture must only simmer before they are added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, celery, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, celery, butter, flour. 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 oyster pie recipes

Boston 12Chicken 5 See all 191 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipes