Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Stew

A stew of oysters cooked with cream or rich milk, butter, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Put the oysters and their liquor in a saucepan.

  2. When they begin to boil, skim them out.

Finish and serve

  1. Add cream or rich milk and seasoning to the saucepan, and skim well.

  2. Add butter to the oysters.

  3. Pour the hot liquor over the oysters and serve.

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

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body and briny flavor of the stew.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, full body to the liquor.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavor and a silky finish.

The step that matters

Skim the oysters out as soon as they begin to boil. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so removing them at the first boil keeps them tender. Their liquor is kept hot and poured back over them to finish the 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.

More oyster stew recipes

Dry 4Virginia 4Chicken 3 See all 211 →

You might also like

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