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Stewed Oysters

A dish of oysters cooked in a broth of wine, bread, pepper, and nutmeg, served with buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the oysters and strain the liquor.

  2. Mix the liquor with grated stale bread, pepper, nutmeg, and white wine.

  3. Boil the mixture.

  4. Prepare buttered toast with the crusts cut off.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the raw oysters to cook them.

  2. Dip the toast in the liquor and arrange it in a deep dish.

  3. Pour the oysters and liquor over the toast and serve hot.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Oyster + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and are cooked gently by the hot liquid poured over them.
Stale bread
Thickens the liquor and gives body to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oyster liquor.
Buttered toast
Forms a soft base that soaks up the liquor and oysters.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot mixture over the raw oysters. The liquid must be hot enough to cook the raw oysters through. If it is too cool, they stay underdone; if the oysters are cooked too long, they become tough and rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, pepper, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, pepper, white wine. 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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