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Angels on Horseback

Oysters wrapped in bacon, seasoned with lemon and cayenne, baked and served hot on watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Angels on Horseback

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from each oyster and trim them.

  2. Place one oyster on each piece of bacon.

  3. Squeeze a drop of lemon juice and add a pinch of cayenne to each oyster.

  4. Roll the bacon around the oyster.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until the bacon is cooked.

  2. Serve very hot on a bed of watercress.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + watercresstop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main filling, whose briny flavor is set off by the bacon.
Bacon
Wraps the oyster and renders fat that crisps and browns the outside.
Round croutons
Serve as a base that soaks up rendered fat and holds the wrapped oysters.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, salty flavor of the oysters and bacon.

The step that matters

Roll the bacon around the oyster. The bacon must wrap the oyster snugly so it cooks evenly and stays in place. Loose wraps can unroll or let the oyster dry out before the bacon crisps.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, watercress):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, watercress. 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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