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Curried Oysters

A curry of oysters simmered with onions, curry powder, cocoa‑nut, and tamarind or apple, thickened with flour and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tamarind and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 137 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters into a basin, keeping their liquor.

Make the curry base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onion and fry until rich brown.

  3. Stir in more butter and the curry powder, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add hot water or broth, cover, and bring to a boil.

  5. Add the grated cocoa-nut and sour tamarinds or chopped apple.

  6. Simmer until the apple dissolves and the cocoa-nut is tender.

  7. Mix in the thickening and salt, then boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled vegetable marrow and tomatoes, if using.

  2. Finally, stir in the oysters with their liquor and cocoa-nut milk.

  3. Let the curry stew gently for a few minutes 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. Tamarind + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tamarind + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 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

Sea oysters
Are the main protein, cooking gently in the sauce so they stay tender.
Onion
Browning the slices builds deep, sweet savoury flavour as the base of the curry.
Curry powder
Blooming it in butter releases its aromatic compounds into the fat, giving the curry its flavour.
Cocoa-nut
Simmered until tender, it adds body and richness to the sauce.
Flour and water thickening
Starch thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the oysters and vegetables.
Vegetable marrow
Adds soft, mild bulk to the curry as it cooks down into the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters at the end. Oysters toughen and turn rubbery when overcooked. Stirring them in with their liquor near the end and letting the curry stew only gently keeps them tender and juicy.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, onion, cocoa, tamarind, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, onion, cocoa, tamarind, flour. 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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