Skip to main content
Main

Chicken with Oysters

Chicken pieces fried and served with oysters in a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken

  1. Boil the chicken pieces until tender.

  2. Remove the chicken and fry in butter (or lard).

Make the sauce

  1. In the boiling liquid, add pepper and salt to taste.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter and enough flour to thicken.

  3. Add the oysters and milk if desired, and boil until heated.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the fried chicken on a large platter.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the dish, cooked first by boiling until tender.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the frying and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be fully dispersed in the hot liquid, ideally first mixed with some liquid or butter, otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

“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.

More chicken with oysters recipes

Steamed 4Stewed 4Stewed Whole 4 See all 9 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes