Skip to main content
Main

Deviled Oysters

Deviled oysters are oysters coated in butter, cayenne, lemon, crumbs, egg, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Deviled Oysters

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Deviled Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the frying oil in a pan.

  2. Dry the oysters and lay them in a flat dish.

  3. Cover the oysters with melted butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice. Let them marinate for 10 minutes, turning frequently.

Coat and fry

  1. Remove the oysters, roll them in cracker crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated oysters in hot lard and butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Main ingredient; the coating and frying cook it while it stays tender inside.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Beaten egg
Helps the cracker crumbs adhere to the oysters as a binding layer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and oyster flavor.
Lard and butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fry the coated oysters in hot lard and butter until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumbs absorb oil and turn greasy before they crisp, while overcooking toughens the oysters. Hot fat sets the coating quickly and browns it through the Maillard reaction.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes