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Oyster Crepinettes

Oyster Crepinettés are oysters coated in a butter‑flour sauce, wrapped in bacon or caul, battered, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Crepinettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Blanch the oysters in their own liquor, strain, trim, and cut them into small slices.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and add the oysters.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice, and chopped parsley; stir over heat for a few minutes.

  4. Thicken the mixture with the egg yolks and spread it on a dish to cool.

Wrap and fry

  1. Once cold, divide into neat oblong shapes and wrap each in a slice of bacon or pig's caul.

  2. Dip each wrapped piece in prepared batter and fry in hot lard or fat until light brown.

Serve

  1. Drain on a cloth, serve on a folded napkin, and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood filling, with their briny flavour carrying through the dish.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the oyster mixture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture so it sets firm enough to shape once cold.
Bacon or pig's caul
Wraps each piece, adding fat and moisture that keep the filling tender while frying.
Batter
Forms a crisp golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. The egg-yolk-thickened mixture must be fully cold to firm up; if shaped warm it stays soft, slumps, and will not hold its oblong form in the wrapper or in hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, pepper, lemon, parsley, egg. 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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