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Oyster Patties

A baked oyster patty made with oysters, butter, flour, mace, lemon, cayenne, salt, cream, puff pastry, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters, cut each into 3 or 4 pieces, and scald them in their own liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add enough flour to absorb it.

  2. Strain the oyster liquor into the saucepan, then add mace, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Add the oysters and cream.

  5. Heat gently without boiling.

Bake and fill the patties

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry and place a small piece of bread in each.

  2. Cover with pastry.

  3. Brush with beaten egg.

  4. Bake until light brown.

  5. Once baked, remove the lids.

  6. Take out the bread.

  7. Fill with the oyster mixture.

  8. Replace the covers.

  9. Briefly return to the oven before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 filling, cooked gently so they stay tender and plump.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, with flour to thicken it.
Flour
Absorbs the melted butter and thickens the sauce into a smooth base.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling.
Egg
Brushed on top to promote even browning of the pastry.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once the cream is added, boiling can curdle the sauce and toughen the oysters, so heat only until warm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, lemon, pepper, cream, bread. 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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