Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Sandwiches

A sandwich filling made from cooked oysters, butter, salt, pepper, cracker crumbs, egg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the oysters.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, add the chopped oysters, salt, and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes in their own liquor.

  3. Stir in the cracker crumbs and beaten egg until thickened.

  4. Add the lemon juice and pour onto a plate.

  5. Let it cool.

Assemble

  1. Once cold, cut into dice and use as filling between slices of bread.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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 flavour and the filling's body as they cook in their own liquor.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture so it holds together when cold.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat and binds the crumbs and oysters into a firm filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the oysters cook in the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg. Adding beaten egg to hot mixture can scramble it unevenly. Stirring steadily while it thickens helps the egg set smoothly and bind the filling evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes