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Stewed Oysters

A sauce of butter, flour, oyster liquid, cream, egg yolk, lemon juice, and mace served with blanched oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters.

  2. Remove the gills from the oysters.

  3. Cut them in half.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Whisk in the flour and oyster liquid or milk to make a sauce.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Add the mace and cream.

  5. Let it boil for ten minutes while stirring constantly.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and egg yolk to the sauce.

  2. Heat gently without boiling.

  3. Remove the mace.

  4. Add the lemon juice.

  5. Serve.

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

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

  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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 tender texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Oyster liquid or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and further thickens the sauce when heated gently.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once the egg yolk is added, boiling can curdle it, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth. Gentle heat lets the yolk thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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