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Dessert

Oyster Short-cake

A shortcake sandwich filled with a warm oyster mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Short-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and bake a shortcake on pie plates.

  2. In a pot, combine oysters, water, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Heat the mixture on the stove until warm.

  4. Thicken the oyster mixture with flour, stirring well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the shortcake is baked, split it and spread the oysters between the layers.

  2. Top with additional oysters.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 filling and the savory flavor of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquid into a creamy sauce as it heats.
Milk
Adds richness and body to the oyster mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the oyster mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in well while the liquid is warm so it dissolves and thickens evenly. Unstirred flour forms lumps that stay raw-tasting and leave the filling uneven.

“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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