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Coddled Oysters

Coddled oysters are oysters cooked in their own liquor with butter, served on toast and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Coddled Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. Heat a large lump of butter in a saucepan.

  3. When hot, add the liquor and bring it to a hard boil.

  4. Drop in the oysters and cook until the edges curl and the oysters are firm.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a deep dish with slices of toast.

  2. Lay the oysters on the toast and pour the liquor over them.

  3. Add salt and pepper, then let it stand in a warm place until the toast absorbs the liquor.

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

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

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Large oysters
Provide the main substance, cooking until their edges curl and they turn firm.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour into the hot liquor.
Slices of toast
Form a soft base that soaks up the hot oyster liquor.

The step that matters

Cook the oysters until just firm. Oysters toughen and shrink quickly when overcooked. Stopping once the edges curl and the flesh firms keeps them tender and juicy.

“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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