Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Oysters

Creamed oysters are oysters coated in a creamy sauce of cream, butter, flour, and oyster liquor, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch and remove gills from the oysters, then set aside to cool.

  2. Scrape the fillets of two whitings.

  3. Pound the fillets with 4 tablespoons of oyster liquor in a mortar, then pass the mixture through a fine wire sieve.

  4. Mix 12 ounces of this with ½ cup of whipped cream, then season with white pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Coat the oysters with the mixture.

  6. Place the coated oysters in a large buttered dish, cover with buttered paper, and place another dish of the same size on top.

Cook the oysters

  1. Cook in water just off the boil for 25 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 ounces of butter with 2 ounces of flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of milk and the oyster liquor, then let it boil gently for 10 minutes while stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat, add ½ cup of cream, and season with white pepper, salt, and a pinch of cayenne.

Serve

  1. Arrange the oysters in circular order in the serving dishes and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley, lobster roe, or chopped parsley.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Form the main body of the dish, gently cooked so they stay tender within the fish-based coating.
Whitings (in the method)
Their pounded fillets make a smooth, binding coating that holds the sauce and oysters together.
Butter
Enriches the flour roux and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the coating and the finished sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it simmers with the roux.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with the roux. The butter and flour must be cooked together and the milk added gradually while stirring constantly, so the starch swells evenly and the sauce does not lump. Boiling gently for the full time lets the starch fully thicken and cook out its raw flour taste.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, cream, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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.

More creamed oysters recipes

on Toast 8 See all 117 →

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesLobster BallsLobster Balls7 recipes