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Brown Fricassee of Oysters in Ramekins

A brown sauce with oysters, onions, parsley, carrot, green pepper, flour, oyster liquor, and cream, served in ramekins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Brown Fricassee of Oysters in Ramekins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Cook the onion, parsley, carrot, and green pepper in the butter until browned.

  3. Add the flour to the pan with the vegetables and cook until well browned.

  4. Stir in the oyster liquor and cream, and cook until the sauce thickens and boils.

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters and drain them carefully.

  2. Strain the sauce over the drained oysters.

  3. Heat the oysters over boiling water.

Serve

  1. Serve in hot ramekins and accompany with hot biscuits, rolls, or puff-paste diamonds.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the cooked vegetables.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter and vegetables.
Oyster liquor
Adds the oysters' briny flavour to the sauce as its liquid base.
Cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce smooth and velvety.
Oysters
The main ingredient, providing the dish's delicate seafood flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until well browned. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken properly. Cooking it well also builds a deeper, nutty flavour in the roux base of the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, carrot, pepper, oyster, flour, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, carrot, pepper, oyster, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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