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Oyster Curry

A curry sauce made with oyster liquor, wine, curry paste, and oysters, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor and oysters

  1. Reduce the oyster liquor and add it to twice its measure of sauce.

  2. Remove gills from oysters and scald them as usual.

  3. Stew the gills in the stock used for the sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the sauce mixture and strain it.

  2. Mix the strained sauce with the oyster liquor without boiling.

  3. Use enough oysters to create a thick mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice or browned rice, sprinkled with curry powder and lemon juice.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. White wine + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and body of the curry, thickening the mixture when used in quantity.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated briny seafood flavour once reduced, deepening the sauce.
White roux
Thickens the sauce by cooking flour and fat together, giving it body.
Curry paste
Supplies the spiced curry flavour that defines the dish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the strained sauce with the oyster liquor without boiling. Oysters toughen and shrink when overheated, and boiling can curdle or thin a roux-thickened sauce. Keeping the heat gentle preserves a tender texture and smooth consistency.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sauce, onion, lemon, white wine, nutmeg, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, onion, lemon, white wine, nutmeg, anchovy. 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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