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Oysters

Oysters served with a sauce of butter, flour, pistachio and chestnut, white wine, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and chestnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and save the liquor.

  2. Fry the oysters and place them on a drainer.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, melt butter, rolled in flour until thick.

  2. Strain in the oyster liquor and stir together.

  3. Add pistachio nuts or chestnuts and let them boil.

  4. Pour in the white wine and mix well.

  5. Beat the egg yolks with cream and stir until thick.

Serve

  1. Pour the ragout over the oysters and garnish with Seville orange quarters.

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. Pistachio + chestnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + chestnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient and savoury flavour, with their liquor adding brininess to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and oyster liquor into a smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and forms the base of the thickened roux.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set and add richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a softer, rounder texture.
Pistachio nuts
Add nutty flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks with cream and stir until thick. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating their proteins, and too much heat makes them scramble into lumps. Stir gently and keep the heat low so the sauce becomes smooth and thick rather than curdled.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, pistachio, chestnut, white wine, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, pistachio, chestnut, white wine, 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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