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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) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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.

Make the oyster filling

  1. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour and ½ pint of milk and cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Add oysters, salt, and pepper.

Make the pastry

  1. Sift ½ pound of flour and a pinch of salt into a bowl.

  2. Add lemon juice and ½ cup of water to make a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough.

  4. Place ½ pound of butter in the center.

  5. Fold over the dough and secure the ends.

  6. Roll out the pastry, fold it over, and roll it out seven times.

  7. Cut into circles.

  8. Make a small cut in the center of each circle.

  9. Brush the tops with egg yolk.

  10. Place on a baking tin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  2. Remove the center of the baked pastry and fill with the oyster mixture.

  3. Place the center back on top and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  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
Form the main filling, providing the savoury seafood flavour of the patties.
Butter
Enriches the pastry, creating flaky layers and a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce for the filling and gives the pastry its structure.
Milk
Forms the base of the creamy sauce that binds the oyster filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top to give the pastry a golden, glossy browning.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding the pastry. Repeated rolling and folding with butter builds thin, separate layers. If the butter softens or melts into the dough, the layers blend and the pastry turns dense instead of flaky.

“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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