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Fricassee of Oysters

A French oyster fricassee made with oysters, butter, flour, oyster liquor, eggs, lemon, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Put oysters in their own liquor over heat.

  2. Once it boils, strain through a colander, keeping oysters in the colander.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter until bubbling.

  2. Sprinkle in flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring with a whisk.

  3. Add oyster liquor and mix well.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in egg yolks, salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and nutmeg.

  6. Return to heat to set the eggs without boiling.

  7. Add oysters. Mix gently.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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; they are gently warmed so they stay tender and are folded in at the end.
Butter
Fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor into a smooth base when cooked briefly.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when heated gently without boiling.
Oyster liquor
Liquid that forms the sauce and adds briny oyster flavour.

The step that matters

Return to heat to set the eggs without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if the sauce boils they can curdle and turn grainy, ruining the smooth texture.

“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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