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Creamed Oysters in Chafing Dish

Oysters cooked in butter, flour, and milk, served hot on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters in Chafing Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish without the hot water pan until it sizzles and browns.

  2. Add the oysters and cook until they release their juices.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour while stirring constantly.

  4. Pour in the milk and stir until the mixture is smooth and the oysters are curled.

  5. Ensure the oysters are fully cooked before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately on small squares of 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 and flavor, and their juices season the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns slightly to add nutty aroma.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that smooths into a sauce when stirred.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the milk and stir until smooth. Flour must be cooked into the butter before the liquid is added, and constant stirring keeps it from forming lumps. Adding milk too quickly or stopping stirring can leave clumps of flour in the sauce.

“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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