Name: Oyster Pie
Ingredients: 100 large fresh oysters (or more if small); 6 hard-boiled egg yolks; 1 large slice stale bread, grated; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon pepper; 1 tablespoon mixed spice (nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon); Butter for greasing; Rich pastry for lining the dish

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

100 large fresh oysters (or more if small)
6 hard-boiled egg yolks
1 large slice stale bread, grated
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon mixed spice (nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon)
Butter for greasing
Rich pastry for lining the dish

Directions

Prepare the filling

Remove the gills from the oysters and set aside.
Mash the hard-boiled egg yolks in a bowl.
Add the grated stale bread, salt, pepper, and mixed spice to the egg yolks and mix well.

Line and bake

Butter a large round dish and line the sides and edge with rich pastry, leaving the bottom unlined.
Fill the pastry with the oyster mixture and bake until golden.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the pie filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Mashed, they enrich the filling and give it a creamy, binding body.
Stale bread: Grated, it absorbs moisture and helps thicken the filling.
Mixed spice: Adds warm aroma from nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon to the filling.
Rich pastry: Forms a sturdy shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, bread, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter):

Clovefits better
Allspicefits better
Parsleyfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, bread, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter. 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.