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Oysters

Oysters simmered in a sauce of anchovy, butter, flour, herbs, and spices, served with toasted bread and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strain the liquor from the oysters and place it in a saucepan with the oysters.

  2. Add the bruised anchovy, coarse sea salt, mace, white pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Let the mixture stew for 15 minutes, then remove the mace and herbs.

  4. Incorporate the butter and flour into the oysters and stew for an additional 10 minutes.

  5. Serve garnished with toasted bread and lemon slices.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  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 and release their liquor, which flavours the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce as it melts into the liquor.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor into a smooth sauce that clings to the oysters.
Bruised anchovy
Adds a savoury, salty depth that blends into the sauce during stewing.

The step that matters

Incorporate the butter and flour into the oysters. Flour should be worked into the butter first so it does not form lumps. Stewing gently after adding it lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce, while boiling hard can toughen the oysters and make them shrink.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, anchovy, mace, butter, flour, bread, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, anchovy, mace, butter, flour, bread, lemon. 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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