Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Pates

A savory pastry filled with oysters in a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Heat the oyster liquor to a boil, drop in the oysters, and cook for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain the oysters, cut them into quarters, and keep them hot over boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter, stir in the flour, and cook for 3 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and gradually pour in the hot milk mixed with baking soda.

  3. Season to taste and let the mixture cool to lukewarm.

  4. Beat in one egg yolk for each cup of sauce, then heat again in a double boiler until smoking hot.

Assemble and serve

  1. Add the oysters to the sauce and fill heated pastry shells before serving.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 flavor and texture of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, giving it creaminess.
Baking soda
Raises the sauce's pH slightly, which helps keep the milk from curdling when heated.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and body when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. If the sauce is too hot when the yolk goes in, the egg can scramble and curdle. Letting the mixture cool to lukewarm first, then heating gently in a double boiler, lets the yolk thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes