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Oysters Roasted in Shell

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Oysters Roasted in Shell

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash and wipe the shells of the oysters.

  2. Place the oysters directly over the blaze with the deeper shell down to catch the liquor.

  3. Serve hot after carefully removing the top shell, leaving the oyster in its juice in the deeper shell.

  4. Serve with a sauce made of melted butter, lemon juice, and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

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

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

  2. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Grapefits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Plumfits about as well

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

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