Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Stew

A stew of oysters simmered with butter, onion, cloves, bay leaves, herbs, garlic, lemon peel, mace, cayenne, mushrooms, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Oyster Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Cut the onion into thin rings and fry in butter until pale brown.

  2. Add the liquor from the oysters, cloves, bay leaves, herbs, bruised garlic, lemon peel, mace, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Add the liquor from the mushrooms and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and thicken the liquor with butter rolled in flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and mushrooms, and let them simmer together for about 20 minutes.

  2. Before serving, add mushroom ketchup and a few drops of lemon juice.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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, cooking gently in the hot broth.
Butter
Fat that softens and browns the onion and enriches the broth.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquor into a smooth, body-rich stew when cooked with butter.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it browns in butter.
Mushrooms
Contribute savoury umami flavour through their canned liquor and the mushrooms themselves.

The step that matters

Thickening the liquor with butter rolled in flour. Flour added to hot liquid clumps unless it is first worked into butter, so the roux-style paste blends smoothly and thickens evenly rather than leaving lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, onion, clove, garlic, lemon, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, onion, clove, garlic, lemon, 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 oyster stew recipes

Dry 4Virginia 4Chicken 3 See all 211 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipes