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Stewed Oysters

A savory oyster dish simmered with egg yolk, flour, butter, spices, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Put the oyster juice into a saucepan and let it simmer, skimming it carefully.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs and one tablespoon of flour.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the simmering juice.

  4. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the saucepan along with the allspice, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  5. Let the mixture simmer for ten minutes.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the oysters.

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

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

  2. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 texture of the dish.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the liquid and add richness and a creamy body.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce and keeps the egg yolks from clumping when stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the simmering juice. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Blending them smoothly with flour first and adding them gradually helps keep the sauce creamy and thickened.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, flour, butter, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, flour, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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