Name: Oyster Broth
Ingredients: 2 dozen medium-sized oysters; 1½ pints oyster liquor or water; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 1 tablespoon butter

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 ↓

Oyster Broth

Ingredients

2 dozen medium-sized oysters
1½ pints oyster liquor or water
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

Chop the oysters finely.
In a chafing dish, combine the chopped oysters with the oyster liquor or water.
Season with salt, pepper, and butter.
Heat and serve in small cups.

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.

Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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 body of the broth.
Oyster liquor or water: Forms the liquid base and carries the oyster flavour through the broth.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

“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.