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Dessert

Oysters a LA Mode

A creamy oyster sauce with lemon, flour, milk, butter, and cayenne pepper.

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

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove the beards from the oysters and simmer them in water for 2 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the strained oyster liquor with lemon juice and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix flour with milk or cream until smooth.

  3. Stir into the boiling mixture.

  4. Stir rapidly for 4 minutes until thick.

  5. Add butter and cayenne pepper.

  6. Chop the oysters and add them to the sauce.

  7. Cover and let the mixture sit on low heat for 5 minutes without boiling.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 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
Provide the main flavour and texture, and their liquor gives the sauce its seafood base.
Fine flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats and stirs.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and softness to the sauce and mellows its flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a glossy finish and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Stir rapidly and keep the sauce from boiling after thickening. Flour must be stirred constantly as it heats so it dissolves without lumps and thickens evenly. Once the sauce is thick, boiling can curdle the dairy and make it grainy, so it is held on low heat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, flour, milk, butter, pepper. 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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