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New York Chafed Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered with butter, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and flour to thicken into a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

New York Chafed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and heat

  1. Place the oysters in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture gently.

Thicken and serve

  1. Gradually add flour while stirring to prevent lumps until the gravy thickens slightly.

  2. Serve on hot plates.

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. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, with their briny, savory flavor and tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, mouthfeel, and a smooth, glossy finish to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour starch clumps when it hits hot liquid all at once, so adding it slowly while stirring keeps it dispersed. Each grain then swells evenly, producing a smooth gravy rather than a lumpy one.

“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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