Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓
Oyster Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crust
Line a deep pie dish with a rich pie crust.
Place a crumpled, clean napkin in the dish to support the top crust.
Cover with the top crust and bake until golden.
Make the filling
Cook the oysters in a pan with butter and add corn starch or flour to thicken the gravy.
Assemble and serve
Once the crusts are done, remove the top crust and take out the napkin.
Pour the hot oysters into the pie dish, replace the top crust, and serve immediately.
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.
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Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Butter + corntop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Oyster + corntop 24% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together250 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 main filling and their briny flavour to the pie.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavour when cooking the oysters in the pan.
- Corn starch or flour
- Thickens the cooking juices into a gravy that holds the filling together.
- Pie crust
- Forms the rich pastry shell and top that encloses the filling.
The step that matters
Cook the oysters in the buttered pan with thickener. Oysters overcook quickly and turn rubbery, and the starch must be cooked through with the juices to thicken smoothly rather than stay floury or lumpy.
“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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