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Oysters, Curried, Indian

Oysters simmered in a curry sauce with coconut, apple, spices, and lemon, served with boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Oysters, Curried, Indian

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open and remove gills from 4 dozen oysters, preserving the liquor.

Make the curry sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the minced onion in butter until tender.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and add more butter if needed.

  3. Gradually pour in the seasoned stock or water and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the rasped cocoa‑nut and minced sour apple, then simmer until the apple dissolves.

  5. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters with their liquor and the cocoa‑nut milk, and let stew for a few minutes, stirring gently.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and serve on a hot dish with a border of boiled rice.

  3. Optionally, add minced vegetable marrow or chopped tomato for extra flavor.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Cocoa + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together52 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 protein and their liquor adds savory flavor to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the aromatic spice flavor that defines the dish.
Cocoa-nut
Adds richness, body and sweetness through its milk and grated flesh.
Sour apple
Dissolves into the sauce, adding acidity and body to balance the curry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the oysters and rice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich curry sauce.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and stew gently. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked, so they should only stew for a few minutes with gentle stirring until just heated through.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, onion, butter, apple, flour, 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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