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Fried Oysters

Fried oysters are oysters coated in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, then fried until browned, served with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from oysters.

  2. Dip oysters in beaten egg.

  3. Coat oysters in cracker crumbs, seasoning with salt and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in deep fat or hot butter for 1 minute, browning nicely on both sides.

  2. Serve with small slices of lemon and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Main ingredient; the tender seafood centre that the crust surrounds.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs adhere to the oysters.
Cracker crumbs
Form the crisp, browned coating that gives the fried texture.

The step that matters

Frying for 1 minute. Oysters cook very quickly; frying too long toughens and shrinks them. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating in that short time, so the crust sets before the oyster overcooks.

“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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