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Creamed Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered in a butter, flour, and cream sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg or celery salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Pick over the oysters and wash and clean them.

  2. Reserve the oyster liquor.

  3. Put the oyster liquor in a saucepan and bring it to a boil, then strain it.

  4. Plump the oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the plumped oysters in a warm saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter in another saucepan and add the flour to it.

  3. Stir in the oyster liquor and hot cream or milk until smooth and glossy.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg or celery salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the hot oysters.

  2. Serve in puff pastry shells or on crusts of bread.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide the main substance and delicate briny flavor of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and rich flavor while carrying the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Oyster liquor
Adds the oysters' own salty, savory flavor and liquid to the sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce smooth. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and the liquid added gradually while stirring, or lumps will form. Heating the cream thin and hot helps it blend in without cooling the roux or curdling 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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