Skip to main content
Main

Mock Stewed Oysters

A stew of salsify cooked with milk, butter, and cracker dust, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mock Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salsify

  1. Scrape and drop salsify into cold water.

  2. Cut salsify into short pieces and stew in boiling salted water until tender.

Make the stew

  1. Drain nearly all the water and add cold milk to the saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot, then add butter and cracker dust.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, stir slowly for five minutes.

  4. Serve. It should be thick like oyster soup.

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

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

  3. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Salsify
Provides the main body and the mild, oyster-like flavour of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the stew its richness and smoothness.
Cracker dust
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup-like body the dish should have.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cracker dust while heating the milk. Cracker dust starch must be heated with the liquid to swell and thicken it. If it is added to cold or undrained liquid, it can clump, and the stew will not reach the thick texture the dish needs.

“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

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes