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Creamed Oyster Plant

A creamy dish made from sliced oyster plant cooked with butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oyster plant and cut it into small slices.

  2. Boil the slices until tender, then drain the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add salt, pepper, and butter, and let it simmer for a while.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the top and stir thoroughly.

  3. Add enough milk to make a sauce and let it boil for 5 to 10 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Oyster plant
Provides the main vegetable body and mild, delicate flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding milk to the flour. Flour stirred into butter and then milk can form lumps if not blended thoroughly. Stirring well and letting the sauce boil gently lets the starch swell evenly and thicken smoothly.

“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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