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Stewed Oysters

A savory oyster dish simmered in a butter and flour base with optional milk.

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

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

  1. Wash the oysters and let the liquor settle.

  2. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve into a saucepan.

  3. Add an equal amount of water to the liquor.

Thicken and cook

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the butter until smooth.

  2. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling liquor.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Let it boil for a few minutes.

  5. Add the oysters.

  6. Let them boil for a moment.

  7. If desired, stir in the milk just before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Are the main ingredient, providing the dish's flavor and body.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a light, smooth broth when stirred in while boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, smoothing the flour into a paste and rounding the flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the broth when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters. Oysters cook quickly and turn tough and rubbery if boiled too long. Adding them last and boiling only a moment keeps them tender.

“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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