Skip to main content
Main

Curried Oysters

A dish of oysters cooked in butter with curry powder, coconut, sour apple, tomato, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take the oysters with their liquor in a basin.

  2. Slice the onion.

Make the curry

  1. Fry the onion in butter until golden.

  2. Add the curry powder and stir for a minute.

  3. Incorporate the oysters and their liquor.

  4. Add broth or hot water to cover.

  5. Cook gently until the oysters are just done.

  6. Add grated coconut, diced sour apple, and chopped tomato.

  7. Season with salt.

  8. Add lemon juice.

  9. Serve.

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 + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Coconut + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  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
Provide the main protein and their liquor adds a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Fat that carries the curry powder's aroma and helps the onion brown.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish, bloomed briefly in the hot fat.
Coconut
Adds richness and a subtle sweetness that softens the curry's heat.
Sour apple
Adds acidity and body that balances the sweetness of the coconut.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Cook gently until the oysters are just done. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so they should be heated only until the edges curl and firm, keeping them tender and juicy.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, onion, coconut, flour, tomato, lemon):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, onion, coconut, flour, tomato, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes