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Oyster Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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.

  1. Butter the inside of a deep dish and line it with thick puff pastry.

  2. Prepare another sheet of pastry for the lid and place a clean towel in the dish to support the lid.

  3. Set the lid on top and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pastry is well baked.

  4. While the pastry bakes, clean the oysters and drain their liquor into a pan.

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

  6. Season with whole pepper, blades of mace, grated nutmeg, grated lemon peel, and minced celery.

  7. Add fresh butter in small bits, lightly dredged with flour, and simmer without boiling.

  8. Beat the yolks of 3 to 5 eggs and stir them into the oyster mixture a few minutes before removing from heat.

  9. Once the pastry is baked, remove the lid and fill the dish with the oysters and gravy.

  10. Decorate the lid with a wreath of pastry leaves and a paste-knot in the center before baking.

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

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, oyster, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, celery, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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