Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Saute

A quick dish of oysters sautéed with bacon, served on buttered toast and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the oysters on a coarse cloth and season with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. In a hot skillet, fry the bacon slices until brown.

  2. Add the oysters to the same pan and cook, turning each oyster until done.

Serve

  1. Serve the oysters on squares of buttered toast.

  2. Garnish with slices of bacon and parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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; they cook quickly and turn firm and opaque when heated.
Bacon slices
Render fat into the pan for frying and add salty, browned flavor to the oysters.
Buttered toast
Adds a crisp, buttery base that soaks up pan juices and contrasts with the soft oysters.

The step that matters

Cooking the oysters until done. Oysters overcook quickly and become rubbery and shrunken. Cooking them briefly, just until the edges curl and they firm up, keeps them tender and juicy.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes