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Deviled Oyster

A creamy, spicy oyster dish topped with bread crumbs and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Deviled Oyster

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter, flour, cayenne pepper, and 3 tablespoons of cold cream.

  3. Stir the mixture into the hot cream and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the chopped oysters and cook for 1 minute.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a slightly buttered dish and cover with bread crumbs.

  2. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven and serve hot.

  3. Garnish with lettuce or celery.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Cream
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a rich, smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the crumbs brown.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that holds the seafood together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Mix the flour and butter with cold cream before adding to the hot cream. Flour mixed into hot liquid clumps easily because its starch sets on contact. Blending it first with cold cream lets the starch spread evenly, so the hot cream thickens smoothly without lumps.

“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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