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Picicled Oysters

A pickled oyster dish flavored with vinegar, mace, cloves, peppercorns, and red pepper, stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Picicled Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and ensure no shell remains.

  2. Place the oysters and their liquor in a porcelain kettle and add salt if necessary.

  3. Heat slowly until the oysters are scalding hot, but do not boil.

  4. Carefully remove the oysters with a clean skimmer and let them cool.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. In the remaining liquor, add the vinegar, mace, cloves, black peppercorns, and red pepper.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil for one minute.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the cooled oysters.

  4. Cover the jar tightly and store in a cool place.

Store and finish

  1. The next day, transfer the oysters to glass jars with tight lids.

  2. Store in a cool, dark place.

  3. Use small pint jars for best results.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. White wine + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,715 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked gently and then preserved in the spiced vinegar.
White wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the oysters and gives the pickle its sharp flavor.
Red pepper
Adds heat and pungency that flavors the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Heat the oysters slowly without boiling. Boiling toughens oyster meat and makes it rubbery, while gentle heating to scalding hot is enough to firm them for pickling and remove the raw state.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, white wine, vinegar, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, white wine, vinegar, clove, 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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