Name: Fricassee of Oysters
Ingredients: 1 quart oysters (or 25 oysters); 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon sifted flour; 2 eggs; Salt to taste; A pinch of red pepper; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; 1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

Place the oysters in a pot with their own liquor and heat until they begin to boil.
Drain the liquor into a hot dish through a colander, leaving the oysters in the colander.

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles, then sprinkle in the sifted flour.
Cook for 1 minute without browning, stirring constantly with a whisk.
Add 1 cup of the oyster liquor and mix well.
Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks, salt, red pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice if desired.
Return to heat to set the eggs, but do not let it boil.
Gently fold in the oysters and serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 flavour and tender texture of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour: Thickens the liquor into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.
Eggs: Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set over gentle heat.

The step that matters

Setting the eggs without boiling. Egg yolks thicken at gentle heat but curdle and turn grainy if boiled, so the sauce must be warmed only until it coats a spoon.

“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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Fricassee of Oysters