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Fricassee of Oyster

A creamy oyster fricassee with butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Oyster

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Drain the oysters and rinse them with cold water, then drain again.

  2. Place the oysters in a bowl and keep them in a cool place until ready to use.

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, combine 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour, rubbing them together.

  2. Light the lamp and stir the mixture for a moment.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk and stir constantly until the sauce is smooth.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters and stir until the edges curl.

  2. Mix in ½ teaspoon of salt, a few shakes of cayenne, the beaten egg yolks, and parsley, then stir for a moment.

  3. Turn off the heat and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Main ingredient; their briny flavour is the core of the dish and they curl as they cook.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the hot sauce to thicken it and enrich its texture.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour and forms the base of the roux.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble into lumps if they meet a very hot sauce. Keep the heat low and stir steadily so the sauce stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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