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Fricassee of Oysters

A creamy oyster dish simmered in butter, flour, and egg yolks, served over toasted bread or crackers.

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

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters in their liquor, then strain off the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

  3. Add the reserved liquor and remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks, salt, and pepper.

  5. Return to heat, add the oysters, and boil for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Serve on toasted bread or split and toasted crackers.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 the tender, briny body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquor and butter into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a creamy, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from the heat first lets them blend smoothly before the sauce is returned to heat.

“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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