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Oyster Cutlets

A fried oyster patty made with bread crumbs, egg yolks, lemon peel, mushrooms, and spices, served on mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the oysters in their own liquor until soft.

  2. Remove the oysters and chop them very small.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the oyster liquor, then squeeze them dry if too wet.

  4. Mix the soaked bread crumbs with the chopped oysters.

  5. Add the hard-boiled egg yolks, lemon peel, nutmeg, chopped mushrooms, salt, and pepper.

  6. Bind the mixture with a well-beaten raw egg.

  7. Add flour if the mixture is not firm enough.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Coat the cutlets with egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in ghee until nicely colored.

Serve

  1. Serve on a stand of mashed potatoes, garnished with parsley and sliced lemon.

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

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and bulk of the cutlet filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the oyster liquor and give the mixture body so it holds together.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Raw egg
Binds the mixture so the cutlets hold their shape when fried.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoriness and moisture to the filling.
Ghee
Fries the cutlets, browning their outside and adding a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Binding and firmness of the mixture. If the mixture is too wet it will fall apart when shaped and fried. Squeezing the soaked crumbs dry and adding flour only if needed gives a firm mix that holds its shape and forms a golden crust in the hot fat.

“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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