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Oyster Pie

A crusted pie filled with oysters, milk, butter, and a gravy made from water, butter, salt, pepper, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a dough for the crust similar to baking powder biscuits.

Assemble the pie

  1. Remove 6 oysters and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Set the rest of the oysters in the bottom of a baking dish.

  3. Add ½ cup milk, salt to taste, and dot with small lumps of butter.

  4. Cover with the crust, about the thickness of a chicken pie, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is golden.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In the saucepan, add ½ cup water, some butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour and milk.

  4. Serve the gravy with the pie.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 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

Oysters
Form the main filling and provide the briny, savory flavor of the pie.
Milk
Adds moisture to the filling and, with flour, thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the crust as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the liquid.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden. Baking at 400°F sets the crust's starches and proteins and browns its surface. Pulling it early leaves the dough pale and doughy, while overbaking dries it out.

“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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