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Escaloped Oysters

Layered oysters with crackers, butter, and seasonings baked with oyster liquor and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Escaloped Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the oysters

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters and remove any bits of shell.

Layer the dish

  1. Butter a deep dish or pan and cover the bottom with crushed crackers.

  2. Layer oysters seasoned with salt, pepper, and bits of butter on top of the crackers.

  3. Repeat layers of crackers and oysters until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of crackers topped with butter.

  4. Pour the oyster liquor mixed with boiling water over the layers.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Add another pint of hot water or a mixture of ½ pint water and ½ pint milk with melted butter.

  3. Bake for another 30 minutes.

  4. Cover with a lid to prevent excessive browning.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main filling and the briny flavor that defines the dish.
Crushed crackers
Absorb liquid and form soft, layered structure that holds the oysters together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown during baking.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the liquid poured over the layers.

The step that matters

Covering the dish during the second bake. Covering the dish limits surface browning so the top does not darken or dry out before the oysters are cooked through.

“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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