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Oyster Curry

A curry of oysters in a sauce made from oyster liquor, white wine, white roux and curry paste, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the oyster liquor with twice its measure of sauce made from the ingredients listed.

  2. Cook the sauce mixture.

  3. Strain the sauce mixture.

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

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters.

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

  3. Heat the oysters through after sealing as usual.

  4. Use enough oysters to create a thick mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve with rice.

  2. Sprinkle 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main protein and flavour, and are gently heated so they stay tender.
White roux
Thickens the sauce, giving it body through its starch and fat.
Curry paste
Adds spice and aroma that define the curry flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth that brighten the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances richness and sharpens flavour.
Apple pulp
Adds natural sweetness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the strained sauce with the oyster liquor without boiling.. Boiling oysters toughens their proteins and makes them rubbery, so they should only be heated through gently once combined with the sauce.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, onion, lemon, white wine, pepper, 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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