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Oyster Patties

A savory dish of oysters mixed with butter, flour, cream, and eggs, served with parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters in their own liquor, removing them immediately after boiling.

  2. Cut each large oyster into four pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Pour in the strained oyster liquor and cream, then add salt and pepper.

  3. Boil while stirring until smooth.

  4. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the cut oysters into the sauce.

  5. Heat everything together, stirring constantly until thickened just before boiling.

  6. Remove from heat, stirring to prevent the eggs from curdling.

  7. Add lemon juice and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve on a silver dish garnished with fried parsley and a small crayfish in each corner, if available.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 seafood flavor and tender texture in the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by cooking with the butter to form a roux.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow body.

The step that matters

Remove from heat, stirring to prevent the eggs from curdling.. Egg yolks thicken sauces through gentle heat. If the sauce gets too hot or sits over direct heat, the proteins in the yolks tighten and scramble, leaving the sauce grainy. Taking it off the heat while stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, cream, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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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