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Fricasseed Oysters

A sauce of butter, flour, oyster liquor, egg yolks, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper served over oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put oysters in their own liquor in a pot over medium heat.

  2. When the liquid begins to boil, strain the oysters through a colander, reserving the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sprinkle in the flour; cook for a few minutes while stirring.

  2. Add the reserved oyster liquor and mix well; remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and nutmeg; return to heat to set the eggs without boiling.

Serve

  1. Add the oysters to the sauce and serve over toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and the tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the sauce into a smooth base.
Oyster liquor
Supplies the briny oyster flavor and liquid that loosens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Stirred in gently, they enrich and thicken the sauce as they set.

The step that matters

Setting the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, around 160°F, and curdle if they boil. Return the pan to heat only until the sauce thickens, and keep it from boiling so the sauce stays smooth.

“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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