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Creamed Oysters

Creamed oysters are oysters simmered in a butter‑corn‑starch thickened milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and corn-starch together until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter and corn-starch mixture into the boiling milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters to the mixture and cook until they are plump and the edges curl.

  2. Serve the creamed oysters on thin slices of buttered graham toast.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked briefly in the sauce until plump and tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps blend the starch smoothly.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Add the oysters to the mixture and cook until they are plump and the edges curl.. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Cooking only until the edges curl keeps them tender and juicy.

“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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