Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Oysters, Fried
Ingredients
Directions
Drain the oysters in a colander and season with salt and pepper.
Prepare 1½ pints of dried bread crumbs and season them with salt and pepper.
Beat the eggs thoroughly in a bowl.
Roll each oyster in the bread crumbs, adding more crumbs as needed, and place them on a baking board sprinkled with crumbs.
Dip each crumbed oyster into the beaten egg, then roll it in the bread crumbs again.
Let the oysters stand for at least 1 hour before frying.
Heat the fat until it is hot enough to produce blue smoke.
Fry the oysters in batches for about 1½ minutes until golden brown, then drain on soft brown paper.
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.
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
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