Skip to main content
Main

Curried Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered in a buttery, flour‑thickened oyster liquor sauce.

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

Why it works: Onion and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Drain the oysters.

  2. Boil the oyster liquor.

  3. Skim and strain the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sauté the sliced onion until golden brown.

  3. Add the flour and mix well.

  4. Pour in the oyster liquor.

  5. Stir until boiling.

  6. If needed, add chicken stock to make up to ½ pint.

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. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 flavour and the seafood element of the curry.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the sauce.
Onion
Browning builds sweetness and savoury depth in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Oyster liquor
Supplies the liquid and sea-salty flavour that forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and stirring until boiling. Flour mixed into melted butter must be cooked and stirred smoothly before liquid goes in, otherwise it forms lumps. Stirring until the liquid boils lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce fully.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, chicken):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, chicken. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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 curry recipes

Tartlets 3 See all 28 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes