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Eaw Oysters

Oysters served on crushed ice with lemon, parsley, salt, pepper, horseradish, and bread.

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 ↓

Eaw Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Serve oysters in deep halves of shells on a plate of finely crushed ice.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon and parsley.

  3. Alternatively, serve in individual ice cases on a folded napkin.

  4. Pass salt, pepper, grated horseradish root, and brown bread sandwiches with this course.

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main dish, served raw and chilled on ice.
Brown bread sandwiches
Offer a soft, mild contrast to the briny, cold oysters.
Grated horseradish root
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the oysters' brininess.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, parsley, pepper, 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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