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Oyster Croquettes

A fried dish of oysters mixed with flour, butter, egg yolks, cream, and crackers.

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

Oyster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Chop the oysters fine and save the liquor.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and add the flour, stirring until combined.

  3. Add the oyster liquor, egg yolks, and cream, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the chopped oysters and enough rolled crackers to form a stiff mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in boiling lard until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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 + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 bulk of the croquette filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a base that holds the filling together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture as it sets.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and stiffen the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.

The step that matters

Forming a stiff mixture before frying. If the mixture is too wet, the cakes can fall apart or burst in the hot lard. Enough rolled crackers stiffens the filling so it holds its shape while frying.

“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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