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Oysters in Peppers

Oysters in peppers with a sauce of ketchup, horseradish, mustard, Worcestershire, Tabasco, paprika, served with shredded cabbage and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oysters in Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the white membrane.

  2. Fill each pepper with six fine oysters.

Make and add the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix tomato ketchup, horseradish, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and paprika to make the sauce.

  2. Cover the oysters in each pepper with the sauce.

Serve

  1. Chill and marinate shredded cabbage with French dressing and set the peppers in a wreath of cabbage.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

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, cooking gently in the sauce and giving the dish its savoury flavour.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, forming the base of the sauce.
Horseradish
Adds sharp heat and pungency that cuts through the richness of the oysters.
Prepared mustard
Adds tangy sharpness that complements the horseradish and ketchup.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and umami to the sauce.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, oyster, ketchup, horseradish, mustard, sauce, cabbage):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, oyster, ketchup, horseradish, mustard, sauce, cabbage. 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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