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Broiled Oysters with Brown Sauce

Broiled oysters served with a brown sauce made from oyster liquor, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Oysters with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Drain oysters in a colander and wipe them with a soft cloth.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the oyster liquor and skim off any scum.

  3. In a frying pan, melt the butter until browned, then add the flour and mix well until browned.

  4. Stir in the oyster liquor and cook until it boils.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Keep the sauce warm over hot water until ready to serve.

Brown the oysters and serve

  1. Heat a griddle until a drop of water hisses on it.

  2. Place the oysters on the griddle, browning them on one side before flipping to brown the other side.

  3. Transfer the browned oysters to the brown sauce and serve on squares of buttered 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 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
Main ingredient that cooks through quickly and gives the dish its flavour and texture.
Oyster liquor
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the oyster flavour into it.
Butter
Fat that is browned with the flour, adding nutty colour and aroma to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and liquor, giving it body.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter. Cooking the butter and flour until evenly browned builds colour and nutty flavour, but if it goes too far it turns bitter; the mixture must also be stirred constantly so it does not lump when the liquor is 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.

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