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Breakfast or Dry Stew

A simple oyster stew cooked in butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, served hot with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Breakfast or Dry Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the oysters in a colander over a bowl.

  2. Heat a skillet and add the butter.

  3. Once melted, add the oysters and stir until the edges curl.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve in a hot covered dish with hot saucers.

  3. Enjoy with buttered toast.

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

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

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + peppertop 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
The main ingredient, providing the body and briny flavor of the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor across the hot skillet.

The step that matters

Stirring the oysters until the edges curl. Oysters cook very quickly. Once the edges curl they are nearly done, and cooking them longer makes them shrink and turn tough and rubbery.

“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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