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Angels on Horseback

Oysters wrapped in bacon, baked, served hot on croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Angels on Horseback

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from each oyster and trim them.

  2. Place one oyster on each piece of bacon.

  3. Sprinkle a little cayenne pepper and 2-3 drops of lemon juice over each oyster.

  4. Roll the bacon around the oyster.

  5. Lay each roll on a crouton.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) just until the bacon is cooked.

  2. Serve very hot on a bed of watercress.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 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 central briny filling that is warmed through inside the bacon.
Bacon
Wraps the oyster and renders fat as it cooks, crisping and browning the outside.
Crofttons
Serve as a crisp base that soaks up rendered bacon fat and holds the roll.

The step that matters

Bake just until the bacon is cooked. Oysters toughen and shrink quickly when overheated, while bacon needs enough heat to render and crisp. Stopping at the point the bacon is cooked keeps the oysters tender and juicy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper. 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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