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Creamed Oysters on Toast

Creamed oysters served on buttered toast with a sauce of cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters until free from shell pieces.

  2. Place them in a saucepan and strain the liquor over them.

  3. Simmer gently until the oysters plump up.

  4. Remove the oysters and keep them warm in the oven.

Make the sauce

  1. Add cream, salt, and pepper to the liquor and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in butter mixed with flour until creamy.

  3. Add the oysters to the creamy sauce and remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the oysters on buttered toast, pouring the cream sauce over them.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Main ingredient; gentle simmering plumps them and they carry the dish's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, body-giving texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps form a creamy, smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes creamy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Simmer the oysters gently. High heat toughens oyster flesh and makes it rubbery, so they should simmer gently only until they plump up.

“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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