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Fried Oyster-plant

Fried oyster-plant is a dish of cooked oyster-plant seasoned with salt, pepper, and vinegar, battered, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Oyster-plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the oyster-plant as described in the previous recipe.

  2. Season the cooked oyster-plant with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  3. Dip the seasoned oyster-plant in the fritter batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in very hot fat for five minutes, separating the pieces with a spoon.

  2. Lift them out with a skimmer, drain on a cloth, and sprinkle with a little salt.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin, garnished with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oyster-plant
Is the main vegetable that is coated and fried, giving the dish its body.
Fritter batter
Forms a coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat, sealing in moisture.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the vegetable.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot fat. If the fat is not very hot, the batter absorbs oil instead of crisping quickly. Crowding the pieces also cools the fat, so separating them with a spoon helps keep the coating crisp rather than greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, vinegar. 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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