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Banned Oysters

Oysters baked in small tins with toasted bread, butter, and oyster liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Banned Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tins

  1. Butter the small tins.

  2. Cut rounds of bread to fit the bottoms and toast them.

  3. Butter the toasted bread and place each round in its tin.

  4. Wet the bread with oyster liquor.

Fill and cook

  1. Add as many oysters as the tins will hold.

  2. Dust with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Top each oyster with a bit of butter.

  4. Arrange the tins in a large dripping pan and cover with another pan to trap steam.

  5. Cook for 8 minutes or until the oysters ruffle.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in the tins.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  3. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Main ingredient that cooks gently in trapped steam until they ruffle and turn plump.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the bread brown lightly.
Slices of bread
Forms a toasted base that soaks up oyster liquor and holds the oysters.
Oyster liquor
Moistens the bread and adds concentrated briny flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Cover with a second pan to trap steam. Trapped steam cooks the oysters evenly and quickly, keeping them moist; without the cover, the edges can dry or toughen before the centres warm through.

“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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