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Oyster Stew

A stew of oysters simmered in cream, butter, and spices, served over buttered toast.

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 ↓

Oyster Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Strain the juice from the oysters into a stew pan and bring it to a boil.

  2. Remove the scum and keep the clear liquid.

  3. Rinse the oysters thoroughly with cold water and add them to the liquid.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread quickly.

  2. Dip each slice in boiling water with a little salt.

  3. Spread the toasted bread with butter.

  4. Place the buttered toast on a serving dish.

Serve

  1. Pour the oyster mixture over the toast.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and the tender, briny body of the stew.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor, and browns the toast slightly when spread on it.
Bread
Forms the base that soaks up the stew and gives a firm, crisp contrast.

The step that matters

Removing the scum before adding the oysters. Scum rising from the oyster liquid is impurities that would cloud the broth and taint its flavor. Keeping only the clear liquid gives a clean, pale stew.

“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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