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Oyster Pie

A savory pie filled with oysters, milk, butter, flour, eggs, and crackers in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the filling

  1. Combine milk, water, and butter in a pot and heat until scalding hot.

  2. Mix flour with a little milk until smooth, then add to the pot and cook until thickened.

  3. Stir in beaten eggs, rolled crackers, and oysters, letting the mixture scald while stirring continuously.

  4. Season with pepper and salt.

Prepare the crust and bake

  1. Prick the bottom crust with a fork to prevent blistering.

  2. Prepare puff pastry, line the baking dish, and bake.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baked pie crust.

  4. Cut the upper crust to fit the dish and bake on heavy paper if necessary.

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provide the main flavor and body of the pie filling.
Eggs
Thicken the filling as they set and add richness to the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk mixture into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that carries the oysters and sets with the eggs.
Rolled crackers
Add body and help soak up liquid so the filling holds together.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the hot mixture. If the mixture is too hot or stirred too little when the beaten eggs go in, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring constantly while the mixture scalds keeps the eggs smooth and lets the filling thicken evenly.

“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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