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Creamed Oysters

A sauce of oysters, cream, egg yolks, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the oysters in their liquor until plump.

  2. In a chafing dish, melt the butter.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook without browning.

  4. Gradually add the oyster juice, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add the cream and seasonings, then extinguish the flame.

  6. Once slightly cooled, stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  7. Relight the flame and stir until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters, stir for a minute, and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 flavour and tender, plump texture in the finished dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and further thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can curdle or scramble if too hot. Letting the mixture cool slightly before adding them, then thickening gently over a flame, keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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