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Fricasseed Oysters

A creamy oyster dish cooked with milk, egg yolks, butter, and rusk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rinse the oysters in a colander under cold water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine water, parsley, and celery seed; bring to a boil.

  3. Add the milk to the boiling mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour with a spoonful of cold milk, then beat in the egg yolks and stir into the saucepan.

  2. Stir until the yolks thicken, but do not let it boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add butter, salt, pepper, and oysters; cook until oysters are fringed and swollen without boiling.

  2. Stir in the rusk, remove from heat, and serve in a warm chafing dish.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Main ingredient; they swell and firm gently in the warm sauce, becoming the dish's centrepiece.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Stabilises the custard, helping it thicken smoothly without curdling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds sweetness and body.
Double baked rusk
Crushed and stirred in at the end, it adds body and absorbs excess liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks until thickened, without boiling. Egg yolks set at low heat but scramble if boiled, leaving the sauce grainy and curdled. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring constantly keeps it smooth. The oysters also toughen and shrink if overcooked, so they should only cook until fringed and swollen.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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