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Oysters, Pickled

Pickled oysters prepared by boiling oysters, reducing the liquid, and pickling with vinegar, mace, peppercorns, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oysters, Pickled

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the oysters

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oysters with their liquor and boil gently for 10-12 minutes.

  2. Remove the oysters and place them in small jars.

  3. Let the liquid settle, then pour off the clear part and measure it.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, boil the measured liquid with the same amount of vinegar, mace, peppercorns, and lemon rind for 10 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, pour the pickle over the oysters and seal the jars tightly.

Serve

  1. Serve the pickled oysters in a small dish with some of the pickle strained over them and garnish with parsley.

  2. Accompany with brown bread and butter.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 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. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Main ingredient that is gently poached, then preserved in the spiced pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the pickle's flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.
Peppercorns
Add a mild, pungent spiciness to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Sealing the jars after the pickle has cooled. Pouring the pickle over the oysters while it is still hot can partly cook them further and soften their texture. Letting it cool first keeps them firmer. Sealing the jars tightly keeps air out and helps the contents keep.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, vinegar, lemon, parsley, bread, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, vinegar, lemon, parsley, bread, butter. 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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