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Oyster Fricassee

A creamy oyster dish made with milk or cream, butter, flour, paprika, parsley, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Prepare the oysters as for stew.

  2. Remove the oysters and reserve the cooking liquid.

  3. Add enough milk or cream to the reserved liquid to make 1 cup.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk or cream mixture to the roux, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolk, paprika, parsley, and oysters.

Serve

  1. Serve the fricassee on toast.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Butter
Enriches the roux and gives the sauce a rich, rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth sauce when cooked into the roux.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce once stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is still boiling. Removing the pan from heat before stirring it in keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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