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Fricasseed Oysters

Oysters cooked in a browned butter, flour, egg, and cream sauce served over toasted bread.

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

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Drain the oysters and dry them as much as possible.

  2. In a skillet, melt ½ cup of butter until it is browned, then add the oysters and cook until they start to cook.

  3. Mix ½ cup of butter with 1 teaspoon of flour and add to the oysters.

  4. Cook for a moment, then add 1 beaten egg mixed with 1 teaspoon of cream.

  5. Cook briefly and pour the mixture over toasted bread.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 ingredient, which cooks briefly so they stay tender.
Butter
Adds richness and browned flavour, and carries the cooking of the oysters.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it coats the oysters.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat to thicken the sauce into a creamy coating.

The step that matters

Cook the egg mixture briefly. Egg thickens and can scramble if overheated, so it should be cooked only briefly over gentle heat once it is added to the oysters.

“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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