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Cream Oysters

Cream oysters are oysters simmered in butter, flour, spices, and cream.

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

Cream Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. In a bowl, rub 1 tablespoon of flour into ¼ pound of butter.

  3. Add mace or nutmeg if desired, along with the whole white peppercorns and salt to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring the oyster liquor to a boil.

  2. Add the oysters and let them boil once.

  3. Stir in the butter and flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Once boiling again, add ½ cup of rich cream and stir well.

  5. Serve immediately after it boils once.

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. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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
Form the main body of the dish and release their savory liquor into the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce into a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Adding the flour-butter paste to hot liquid while stirring constantly keeps it dispersed, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

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