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Oyster Patties

A pastry shell filled with a buttery oyster mixture, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to 1/4 inch thick and cut into squares to cover 10 patty pans.

  2. Place a walnut-sized piece of bread on each pastry square.

  3. Roll out another layer of pastry to the same thickness, cut into squares, and wet the edges of the bottom pastry before placing it on top.

  4. Trim the edges for evenness, notch them with a knife, and brush lightly with the yolk of an egg.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. While baking, parboil the oysters in their own liquor until reduced by half, then cut them in half.

  3. In a pan, combine the oysters with 1 ounce of butter rolled in flour, ½ cup of cream, and a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Stir the mixture over heat for 5 minutes, then fill the baked patties and place the top on.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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

Puff pastry
Its layers puff and separate in the oven, forming the light, flaky patty shell.
Oysters
They are the main filling, providing the savory flavor of the patty.
Butter
Rolled in flour and melted into the filling, it adds richness and body to the sauce.
Flour
Coats the butter and thickens the cream into a smooth, binding sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, thickening gently into the creamy filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the top, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.

The step that matters

Stir the filling over heat after adding the cream. Heating the flour-thickened cream gently while stirring keeps it smooth and lump-free. Stopping too early leaves a raw floury taste, while overheating can split the cream and toughen the oysters.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, oyster, butter, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, oyster, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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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