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Creamed Oysters on Toast

Creamed oysters served over hot toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a large hot platter with slices of hot toast.

  2. In a pot, bring 1 pint of milk to a boil.

  3. Add 1 pint of oysters to the boiling milk.

Make the cream

  1. In a small bowl, mix 2 teaspoons of cornstarch or flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the pot with the oysters.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  4. Add a lump of butter and stir until melted.

Serve

  1. Pour the creamed oysters over the toast and serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 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 + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Are the main ingredient, providing the dish's flavor and the body of the creamed filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream that the oysters cook in.
Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornstarch mixture. Starch must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before adding it to hot milk, otherwise it clumps. Once the milk is hot, the starch needs to be stirred in and kept moving so it thickens evenly.

“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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