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Fricassee of Oysters

A creamy oyster fricassee made with butter, sherry, oyster juice, cream, egg yolks, cayenne, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a pan until melted.

  2. Add the sherry and oyster juice, then the cream and cayenne pepper.

  3. Bring to a boil, then stir in the egg yolks until it thickens to a custard.

Finish with oysters

  1. Season the oysters with salt and pepper, then add them along with the lemon juice.

  2. Cook for a few minutes until the oysters are just heated through.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the liquid into a custard-like sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the sauce.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture when gently heated.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat or at low heat. Egg yolks set into a custard when gently heated but scramble if the mixture boils hard. Keep the heat controlled and stir constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sherry, oyster, cream, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sherry, oyster, cream, 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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