Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Pie

A savory pie filled with oysters, cream, butter, and eggs, topped with bread crumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters and drain them.

  2. Place oysters between clean napkins to dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off half the oyster liquor into a saucepan and season with salt.

  2. Stir in cream, butter rolled in grated cracker, and a little Cayenne pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Chop hard-boiled eggs and mix with enough bread crumbs to cover the pie top.

  2. Season the bread and egg mixture with Cayenne pepper and salt.

  3. Line the sides of a pie dish with rich pie crust.

  4. Add oysters to the dish and pour hot liquor over them.

  5. Sprinkle the bread crumbs on top and cover with a lid of pie crust.

  6. Cut an opening in the center of the top crust and decorate with paste flowers or leaves.

  7. Bake until the crust is done and serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main filling and provide the dish's briny, savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce that surrounds the oysters.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps thicken the sauce when rolled in cracker.
Grated cracker
Thickens the sauce and gives it body as it cooks into the liquid.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the bread-crumb topping.

The step that matters

Pour off half the oyster liquor. Oyster liquor is salty and naturally flavoured, so measuring out only half and seasoning carefully prevents the sauce from becoming too salty once the other ingredients are added.

“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.

More oyster pie recipes

Boston 12Chicken 5 See all 191 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes