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Chicken Sautes, with Oyster Sauce

A sautéed chicken dish flavored with oyster sauce, clarified butter, and lemon juice, served with fried bread croutons.

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 ↓

Chicken Sautes, with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Heat clarified butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper, then fry until light brown.

  3. Pour off the excess butter and add the oysters with their liquor.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Stir in the drawn butter sauce, glaze, and lemon juice.

  2. Ignite the mixture and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the chicken with fried croutons of bread around it.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and, when browned, the savoury flavour of the dish.
Clarified butter
Fries the chicken at a high temperature without burning, adding richness and browning.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the sauce.
Drawn butter sauce
Adds richness and a smooth, coating body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and oyster flavours.

The step that matters

Igniting the mixture. Igniting the sauce burns off alcohol and concentrates flavour, but the flame can flare up if the pan is too hot or the mixture is left unattended. Keep the pan away from the hood and watch it closely.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, pepper, oyster, sauce, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, pepper, oyster, sauce, bread. 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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