Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Oysters on Toast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the oyster sauce
Heat the oysters in their own liquor until boiling, then skim them.
Add the butter and flour, rubbed to a cream, and season with salt and pepper.
Cook for about 2 minutes to ensure the flour is cooked.
Prepare and serve
Prepare some nicely toasted bread.
If the oysters lack liquor, wet the edges of the toast with a little salted water using a teaspoon.
If there is enough liquor, you can skip wetting the toast.
Pour the oysters over the toast.
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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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,545 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 flavour and tender texture of the dish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
- Flour
- Thickens the liquor into a smooth, creamy sauce.
The step that matters
Cooking the flour in the butter mixture. Cooking for about 2 minutes lets the raw starch of the flour cook through, removing a pasty raw taste and fully thickening the sauce.
“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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