Skip to main content
Main

Plain Oyster Stew

A simple oyster stew made with oysters, water, milk, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Plain Oyster Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Stir oysters with cold water using a fork.

  2. Remove oysters from the liquor one at a time and place in a saucepan with some strained liquor.

Make the stew

  1. Heat on the stove until it comes to a boil.

  2. Add milk and skim carefully.

  3. Allow to come to a boil again without boiling.

  4. Add salt to taste and butter, stirring until dissolved.

  5. Serve.

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. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

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 flavor and tender texture of the stew.
Milk
Forms the creamy, mellow body of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk back to a boil without boiling. Once milk is added, a hard boil can scorch its bottom and make it boil over. Oysters also toughen and shrink when cooked too long at a rolling boil, so heat gently until just steaming at the edge.

“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 stew recipes

Dry 4Virginia 4Chicken 3 See all 211 →

You might also like

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