Skip to main content
Main

Minced Oysters

A sauce of minced oysters, mushrooms, wine, stock, egg yolks, cream, butter, parsley, chives, and flour served on croutons or puff-paste shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Minced Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. In a saucepan of boiling water, add the oysters.

  2. Once boiling again, skim them out and place in cold water for 1 minute.

  3. Drain and mince them, but not too fine.

  4. Combine the minced oysters with half the bulk of finely minced cold fish, if available.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of parsley, 1 teaspoon of chives, and the mushrooms.

  3. Stew gently for about 5 minutes, adding 1 teaspoon of flour when the butter melts.

  4. Stir in the white wine and fish stock (or oyster juice). Mix well.

  5. Add the minced mixture.

  6. Stew gently until the sauce is absorbed and the mixture thickens. Avoid scorching.

  7. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks mixed with cream.

  8. Stir over low heat for about 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on large croutons or puff-paste shells.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 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

Oysters
Provide the main body and briny flavor of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it with a smooth, custard-like texture when gently heated.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the mushrooms and herbs and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Helps thicken the sauce as it cooks in the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the texture of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, balancing the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the sauce thickens, then add the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the sauce must be removed from heat before they are stirred in, and the gentle reheating kept low. Avoiding scorching keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, mushroom, white wine, fish, egg, cream, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, mushroom, white wine, fish, egg, cream, butter. 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes