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Mock Oysters

A baked dish of artichokes and sardines mixed with egg, pepper, salt, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mock Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the artichokes until tender.

  2. Scald, skin, and bone the sardines, then pound them into a paste.

  3. Butter souffle dishes.

Make and bake

  1. Beat the artichokes and sardines together with the egg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fill the dishes with the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Alternatively, bake the mixture in a pie dish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Artichoke + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Artichoke + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together893 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichokes
Form the bulk of the filling and give it a tender, soft body.
Sardines
Add savory, fishy flavor and body when pounded into a paste.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Brown in the oven. Bread crumbs brown through dry heat, and the mixture is already cooked, so the top should be browned without overbaking the filling, which can dry it out and make it tough.

“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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