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Mock Oysters

A fried dish made from oyster plant, egg, and breadcrumbs, served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cook the oyster plant until tender.

  2. Mash the cooked oyster plant in a bowl until smooth.

  3. Add the beaten egg and browned bread crumbs to the mashed plant. Mix well.

  4. Form the mixture into pieces the size of an oyster.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in egg.

  2. Coat each piece with cracker dust.

  3. Fry in deep oil until dark brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon triangles.

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. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Forms the soft, tender body of the mock oyster once cooked and mashed.
Egg
Binds the mashed mixture and gives the coating a surface that holds crumbs.
Browned bread crumbs
Add body and a toasted flavour, and help the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until dark brown. Frying in hot oil browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour. Too little heat or time leaves the coating pale and the mixture soft inside.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, bread):

  1. Pumpkinfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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