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Angels on Horseback

Oysters wrapped in bacon and fried bread, seasoned with cayenne and lemon, baked until crisp.

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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Trim the oysters and place each one on a small piece of bacon.

  2. Add a little cayenne pepper and a few drops of lemon juice.

  3. Roll up the bacon around the oyster and fasten with a skewer.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until the bacon is crisp.

  2. Place a roll on each croute, garnish with parsley or watercress, and serve hot.

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. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 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 tender, briny centre that is wrapped and cooked inside the bacon.
Bacon
Wraps the oysters and crisps in the oven, adding fat, salt and savoury browning.
Fried bread croutes
Act as a crisp base that holds each rolled bacon and oyster while serving.

The step that matters

Bake until the bacon is crisp. Oysters cook quickly and turn rubbery if overheated, while the bacon needs enough high heat to render fat and brown. Watching for crisp bacon signals that the oysters are just done.

“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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