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Grandma's Oyster Pie

A pot pie of oysters and potatoes with a dough crust, served as a thick, rich soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Grandma's Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the sliced potatoes in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Prepare pie dough and roll it thin, then cut into small squares.

Make the pot pie

  1. Drop the dough squares into the boiling water with the potatoes.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Add oysters to the pot pie and bring to a boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake two squares of dough the size of a biscuit pan until golden.

  2. Layer one baked crust in a large dish.

  3. Add part of the pot pie.

  4. Place another crust on top.

  5. Add the remaining pot pie.

  6. Ensure the soup is thick and rich before serving.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Potato + oystertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that thickens the broth and gives the filling body as it cooks down.
Pie dough
Forms the tender dumplings and golden baked crust that hold the filling.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Bring the oysters to a boil. Oysters overcook quickly and turn rubbery when boiled too long. Adding them near the end and heating only until they just firm up keeps them tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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