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Fried Oyster Plant

A fried cake made from mashed oyster plant roots, milk, butter, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Fried Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roots

  1. Scrape the oyster plant roots and place them in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Boil the roots until tender, then drain and let cool.

  3. Mash the cooled roots, removing all fibers.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Mix in milk, butter, salt, pepper, and beaten eggs.

  2. Form the mixture into round cakes, coat with flour, and fry in hot butter until light brown.

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

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 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

Oyster plant roots
Provide the main body and starchy, mild flavor of the cakes.
Eggs
Bind the mashed roots together so the cakes hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cake surfaces brown when fried.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the hot fat for a crisp exterior.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed mixture.

The step that matters

Removing all fibers when mashing the roots. Fibers left in the mash create a stringy texture and can prevent the cakes from holding together smoothly, so the roots should be mashed thoroughly and fibrous strands removed.

“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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