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Stewed Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered in a butter, flour, milk, cream, egg yolk, and lemon juice sauce.

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 oysters

  1. Put the oysters with their liquid into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Remove the gills and gristle from the oysters.

  3. Cut each oyster into four pieces.

  4. Save the oyster liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils.

  4. Add the oyster liquid, yolk of egg, cream, and lemon juice.

  5. Cook for one minute longer.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and heat through.

  2. Serve on a small hot dish, garnished with toast points.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the flavor of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and further thickens the sauce, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Add the yolk and cream off the heat or at low heat, then cook gently. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat; if it boils it can curdle and turn grainy, so the sauce must be kept below a simmer once the yolk goes in.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, oyster, butter, flour, milk, cream, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, oyster, butter, flour, milk, cream, egg. 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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