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A Fine Oyster Pie

A baked pastry dish filled with oysters, butter, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

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 ↓

A Fine Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a baking dish and line it with puff pastry.

Fill and cover

  1. Season the oysters with pepper and salt, then mix in the butter and bread crumbs.

  2. Add the oyster mixture to the lined dish, leaving out the liquor.

  3. Cover the pie with strips of puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour; if the crust browns too quickly, cover it with doubled paper.

  2. If the pie looks dry, pour in some of the boiled oyster liquor.

  3. Serve immediately for best results.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main filling and provide the dish's savory, briny flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and helps the crust brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the oyster mixture into a soft filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky top and bottom crust that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Covering the crust during baking. Puff pastry browns quickly at 350°F while the filling is still heating through, so a loose paper cover slows browning and lets the centre cook without scorching the crust.

“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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