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Fricassee of Oysters

A buttery oyster fricassee with egg yolks, parsley, and spices, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassee

  1. Brown the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, pepper, salt, cayenne, and flour to the pan. Heat until combined.

  3. Add the well-drained oysters and cook until the edges begin to curl.

  4. Stir in the well-beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve on warmed plates with fried bread 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 body of the dish, cooking briefly until their edges curl.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns to a nutty flavour that carries the dish.
Egg yolks
Stirred in at the end to enrich and thicken the sauce slightly.
Flour
Lightly thickens the buttery liquid so it coats the oysters.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the pan is too hot. Add them off the heat or over low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy rather than grainy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, egg, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, egg, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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