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Oysters on Toast

Oysters on Toast is a dish of toasted bread topped with oysters simmered in oyster liquor, salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast and butter the slices of bread.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a shallow dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the oyster liquor in a saucepan.

  2. Add coarse sea salt, black pepper, and thicken with a little flour.

  3. Just before it boils, add the oysters.

  4. Let it boil once, then pour over the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and tender texture of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquor into a sauce that clings to the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the toast brown lightly and taste savoury.
Oyster liquor
Carries the briny oyster flavour and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters just before boiling. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Adding them near the boil and letting it boil only once cooks them gently while keeping them tender.

“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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