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Deviled Oysters

Oysters coated in butter, cayenne, lemon, and crumb coating, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Deviled Oysters

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 ↓

Deviled Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the oysters dry and lay them in a flat dish.

  2. Cover the oysters with melted butter, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Let the oysters marinate for 10 minutes, turning frequently.

  4. Remove the oysters.

Bread and fry

  1. Roll the oysters in cracker crumbs.

  2. Roll the oysters in beaten egg.

  3. Roll the oysters again in cracker crumbs.

  4. Fry the oysters in a mixture of hot lard and butter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked by frying while the coating crisps around them.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that gives the fried oysters their crunch.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the oysters.
Lard and butter
Provide the frying fat, which conducts heat and browns the coating while adding richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the oysters.

The step that matters

Breading in the right order. The oysters must be dry before the first crumb coating, and the egg must coat them fully so the second layer of crumbs adheres. Gaps let the coating slip off in hot fat.

“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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