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Oysters Devilled

A quick deviled oyster dish made with tomato sauce, mustard, cornflour, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oysters Devilled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomato sauce, mixed mustard, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and cornflour mixed with water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Add the oysters and serve

  1. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  2. Add the oysters to the mixture.

  3. Reheat for 2 minutes.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, with a briny flavour and tender texture when gently heated.
Tomato sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, adding body, sweetness and acidity.
Mixed mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that balances the sweetness of the tomato sauce.
Cornflour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, coating consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the oysters off the heat and reheat briefly. Oysters are delicate, and prolonged high heat makes their proteins contract, leaving them rubbery and dry. Adding them off the heat and reheating gently keeps them tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, tomato, sauce, mustard, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, tomato, sauce, mustard, pepper. 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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