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Pickled Oysters

A pickled oyster recipe using vinegar, boiling juice, lemon, cloves, peppercorns, mace, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Pickled Oysters

will season 100 oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice and oysters

  1. Boil the juice and skim off any impurities.

  2. Dip the oysters into the hot juice two or three times, then immediately dip them into ice water.

  3. Place the oysters in a tureen.

Make the pickle

  1. Mix the vinegar with the cooled boiling juice.

  2. Add the lemon slices, cloves, peppercorns, mace, and salt to the mixture.

  3. This mixture will season 100 oysters.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
The main food, which takes on sharpness and seasoning from the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the oysters.
Lemon
Adds acidity and a bright citrus aroma to the pickling liquid.
Whole cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Dipping the oysters in hot juice. A quick dip in the hot juice firms the oysters and sets their edges while the centres stay tender. Leaving them in longer cooks them through and makes them tough, so they should be moved straight into ice water after two or three dips.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, oyster, clove, mace):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, oyster, clove, mace. 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.

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