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Stewed Vegetable Oysters

Stewed vegetable oysters simmered in milk with optional flour or egg, served over browned toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Vegetable Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and slice the vegetable oysters into ½ inch thick pieces.

  2. Place them in a small amount of boiling water and cook until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Pour in 1 cup of rich milk and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes.

  2. Mix a little flour with milk until smooth.

  3. Add the mixture to the pot, along with salt if desired.

  4. Boil once and serve as a vegetable or over slices of nicely browned toast.

  5. Alternatively, use a well-beaten egg instead of flour.

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. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Vegetable oysters
Provide the main body and mild, oyster-like flavour of the stew.
Rich milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the stew its smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the stew becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Well-beaten egg
Can replace flour as a thickener, setting gently in the hot milk.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the milk. Flour mixed with milk should be smooth before it goes into the pot. Lumps form when flour meets hot liquid directly, and they are hard to remove once the stew thickens.

“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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