Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Fritters

Fried oyster fritters made with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and batter, served with lemon slices and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Pour the strained juice of a lemon over the oysters and sprinkle with cayenne pepper.

  2. Let the oysters sit for one hour, turning them two or three times.

  3. Remove the oysters and drain them thoroughly on a cloth.

Fry and serve

  1. Stick a skewer into each oyster, dip it into frying batter, and drop it into plenty of boiling fat.

  2. Fry until pale golden brown, then drain well on a sieve.

  3. Dish the fritters in a pile on ornamental paper and serve immediately.

  4. Garnish with slices of lemon and fresh 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. 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main filling, cooked briefly so they stay tender inside a crisp coating.
Frying batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that seals in moisture while the oyster cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the oysters' briny flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the oysters thoroughly before battering. Surface moisture thins the batter and turns the boiling fat violently, so the coating can slip off or spatter. Patting the oysters dry helps the batter cling and fry crisply.

“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 oyster fritters recipes

Mock 4 See all 129 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes