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Curried Oysters

A sauce of butter, flour, and curry powder served over boiled oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the oysters and reserve the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor with the butter and flour, mixing until smooth.

  2. Stir in the curry powder and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the oysters and boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, 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 protein and briny flavor that the curry sauce surrounds.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquor into a smooth sauce that clings to the oysters.
Curry powder
Supplies the spice blend that gives the dish its warm, aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and boil for 1 minute. Oysters cook very quickly, and extended boiling toughens their flesh and makes them rubbery. Brief heating is enough to warm them through while keeping them tender.

“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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