Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Rolls

Oyster rolls are oysters wrapped in bacon, seasoned with anchovy essence, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and served on croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from oysters.

  2. Cut the rind off the bacon and slice it thinly.

Assemble and cook

  1. Place 2 drops of essence of anchovy, 4 drops of lemon juice, and a pinch of cayenne pepper on each oyster.

  2. Roll each oyster in a slice of bacon and secure with a skewer.

  3. Fry the rolls until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve each roll on a crouton while 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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
Serve as the main filling, giving the rolls their briny, savoury core.
Bacon
Wraps the oysters and crisps as it fries, adding fat, salt and browning.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a concentrated savoury, umami flavour that deepens the oysters.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich bacon and briny oysters.
Croutons
Provide a crisp bread base that holds each roll and soaks up its juices.

The step that matters

Fry the rolls until cooked through. Oysters cook quickly and turn firm and rubbery if overcooked, while the bacon needs enough heat to render and crisp. Frying until the bacon is done without overcooking the oyster keeps both tender and juicy.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes