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Oysters a LA Mode

A fried batter of eggs, flour, and oyster powder served in a pyramid shape.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux paste

  1. Melt the butter in cold water in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add the flour, stirring vigorously until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Incorporate the eggs, salt, cayenne, lemon juice, and oyster powder one at a time, mixing well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat until hot but not smoking.

  2. Drop small spoonfuls of the mixture into the fat and fry until golden brown, about 5 to 10 minutes.

  3. Serve on a napkin in a pyramid shape, sprinkled with dried oyster powder.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Vienna flour
Provides starch and gluten that set the paste into a structure once cooked.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, and help the fried pieces puff and set.
Oyster powder
Supplies the oyster flavour that defines the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the paste, softening its texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling liquid. The flour must be stirred vigorously until the mixture pulls away from the pan so the starch gelatinises and the paste forms a cohesive dough. Undercooked paste can collapse or turn greasy when fried.

“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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