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Oyster Toast

A toasted bread topped with a buttery oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Toast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the toast

  1. Remove the crusts from the bread and cut each slice into two oblong pieces.

  2. Toast and butter the bread pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the oysters with their juice until warmed, then remove the oysters and set the liquid aside.

  2. In the oyster liquid, stir together 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth, then let it boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat, add salt and pepper, and stir in the beaten egg yolks rapidly.

  4. Chop the oysters finely and mix them into the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread the mixture over the toast and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 flavor and the savory body of the topping.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it with fat and richness when stirred in off the heat.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquid into a smooth, stable sauce when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the toast and helps the sauce taste rounded.
Bread
Forms the crisp base that holds the topping.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks in off the heat. Egg yolks can scramble if added to a boiling sauce. Removing the pan from heat first and stirring rapidly lets the yolks thicken the sauce gently and smoothly.

“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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