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Panned Oysters

A simple oyster dish cooked in butter and served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Panned Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. Melt the butter in a kettle.

  3. Add a little of the oyster liquor, salt, and pepper to the melted butter.

Cook and serve

  1. When hot, add the oysters and cook until the edges begin to curl.

  2. Pour the oysters into a hot dish on buttered toast.

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 + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked briefly in butter until their edges curl.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and carries the seasoning and oyster liquor.
Oyster liquor
Adds briny flavour to the butter as it is added with the salt and pepper.

The step that matters

Cook the oysters until the edges just begin to curl. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Removing them as soon as the edges curl keeps them tender and juicy.

“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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