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Creamed Oysters

A sauce of oysters, cream, butter, and flour, thickened with oyster broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the oysters in their liquor in a saucepan and the cream in another pan.

  2. While the oysters are coming to a boil, cream together the butter and flour.

Make and finish the sauce

  1. Add the butter and flour mixture to the cream until it thickens to a paste.

  2. Drain the oysters and add them to the cream mixture.

  3. If the mixture is too thick, add a little oyster broth to improve the flavor, but do not make it too thin.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

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

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Provide the main flavor and the tender bite of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth, spoonable sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the cream. Flour must be cooked in the hot cream to thicken it smoothly. If it is added too quickly or unevenly, it clumps, and the sauce ends up lumpy rather than creamy.

“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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