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Fricasseed Oysters

A creamy oyster dish cooked with butter, flour, and thick cream, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in clear water.

  2. Place the oysters in a saucepan.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and butter.

  4. Cook until the edges curl.

  5. Dust the oysters with flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the cream in a separate pot without boiling.

  2. Add the cooked oysters to the cream in the saucepan.

  3. Serve over small pieces of toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Are the main ingredient, cooked briefly until their edges curl to firm them up.
Flour
Dusted over the oysters to lightly thicken the cream sauce as it combines.
Thick cream
Forms the rich, creamy base of the sauce, adding moisture and fat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness when cooking the oysters.

The step that matters

Heat the cream without boiling. Boiling thick cream can cause it to separate and become grainy, and it can toughen the oysters once they are added. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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