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Creamed Oysters in Ramekins

Creamy oysters served in ramekins with butter, flour, broth, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters in Ramekins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Pour cold water over the oysters and wash them to remove shell or sand.

  2. Strain the liquor through cheesecloth and heat it to boiling.

  3. Add the oysters and heat quickly to boiling, then drain them.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then cook the flour, salt, and pepper in it.

  2. Add the broth and cream (or milk) and stir until boiling.

  3. Add the oysters and heat until very hot.

Serve

  1. Serve in warmed ramekins, optionally with olives, pickles, biscuits, or rolls.

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

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

  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 + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 tender bite of the dish.
Butter
Carries flavor and forms the base of the thickening roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in melted butter, giving it body.
Oyster broth
Forms the savory liquid that the sauce is built on, adding briny flavor.
Heavy cream or whole milk
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the oysters last and heat only until very hot. Oyster proteins toughen and shrink when held at a boil for long, so the oysters should go into the hot sauce at the end and be heated only until warmed through.

“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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