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Stewed Oysters

A dish of oysters stewed with cream, butter, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the oysters in a colander and rinse to remove all shell and grit.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the boiling water or oyster juice for 5 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters to the soaked bread crumbs and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the cream, butter, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and thicken the stew slightly.

The step that matters

Add the cream, butter and seasoning, then bring to a boil. Boiling a cream-based liquid can cause it to separate or scorch on the bottom, and boiling oysters for long makes them tough and shrunken. Watch the heat closely once the cream goes in.

“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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