Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Creamy oyster dish served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters until free from shell pieces.

  2. Place the oysters in a saucepan.

  3. Strain the liquor over the oysters.

  4. Simmer gently for a few minutes until the oysters plump up.

  5. Remove the oysters with a skimmer.

  6. Keep the oysters warm in the oven.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Add the cream, salt, and pepper to the liquor in the pan.

  2. Bring the liquor to a boil.

  3. Stir in the butter mixed with flour.

  4. Add the oysters to the sauce.

  5. Remove the pan from heat.

Serve

  1. Serve the oysters on buttered toast.

  2. Pour the cream sauce over the oysters.

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. Cream + buttertop 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 they plump up in their own liquor.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce, and carries the flour for thickening.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce when mixed with butter and stirred into the liquor.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter mixed with flour. Adding the flour-butter paste to a boiling liquid lets it disperse and thicken evenly; stirring well prevents lumps. Removing from heat before adding oysters keeps them tender rather than overcooked 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes