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Oyster Loaves

Oyster Loaves are small loaves filled with a buttery oyster sauce, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Loaves

1 dozen small loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Remove gills from oysters and cut into small dice.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  3. Gradually add flour, stirring continuously.

  4. Stir in milk gradually.

  5. Add the liquor from the oysters.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  7. Let the sauce thicken.

  8. Add the oysters and heat through without boiling.

Fill and serve

  1. Cut off the tops of the small loaves, scoop out some of the inside, and fill with the mixture.

  2. Replace the tops and arrange the loaves pyramidically on a dish.

  3. Garnish with parsley and serve cold.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 flavour and the tender, briny filling that the sauce carries.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour, giving it a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk and liquor into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oysters.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and heat through without boiling. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so they should be warmed just until heated through. Boiling the sauce can also cause the flour-thickened milk to break or turn grainy.

“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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