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Oysters

Oysters simmered in a ham, herb, and onion broth, thickened with egg yolks, cream, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth base

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter with the ham, parsley, sweet herbs, and onion.

  2. Stew over low heat for a few minutes.

  3. Add flour, broth, and lemon peel.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the oysters and simmer until hot.

  2. Thicken with egg yolks, cream, and butter.

  3. Remove the ham, herbs, onion, and lemon peel before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Main ingredient, cooked gently until hot so they stay tender.
Egg yolks
Thicken the broth into a smooth, rich sauce when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the broth's flavor.
Flour
Thickens the broth by absorbing liquid as it heats.
Butter
Carries the herb and ham flavors and adds richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Thicken with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture must stay below a simmer and be stirred constantly. Overheating can curdle the yolks and leave the sauce grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ham, parsley, clove, flour, lemon, oyster):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, parsley, clove, flour, lemon, oyster. 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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