Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Plant

A simple dish of oyster plant cooked with milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Plant

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the oyster plant.

  2. Cut the oyster plant into pieces ½ inch thick.

  3. Place the pieces in cold water to keep them white.

  4. Wash the pieces.

Cook

  1. Cook the pieces in boiling water until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the water.

  3. Add ½ cup of milk to the drained pieces.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix 2 teaspoons of butter and 2 teaspoons of flour.

  5. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the vegetable mixture.

  6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  7. Serve hot.

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

Oyster plant
Is the main vegetable that becomes tender and forms the body of the dish.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the cooked pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid with the butter, helping the dish become creamy rather than watery.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the vegetable mixture. Flour thickens liquid only when it is evenly dispersed and heated, so stirring thoroughly prevents lumps and uneven thickening.

“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.

More oyster plant recipes

Scalloped 8Fried 6Stew 4Creamed 3Stewed 3 See all 7 →

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes