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Oyster Sautes

Sautéed oysters cooked in butter, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt, served hot with a brown skin.

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 ↓

Oyster Sautes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Drain the juice from the oysters thoroughly.

  2. Butter a chafing dish and heat it until very hot.

  3. Place the oysters in a single layer in the dish.

  4. Brown one side of the oysters, then turn and brown the other side, adding a little butter while cooking.

  5. The butter and oyster juice will form a brown skin in the dish.

  6. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then serve the oysters and skin very 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. 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
Main ingredient that is seared to develop a browned exterior while staying tender inside.
Butter
Conducts heat and browns with the oyster juice, adding richness and a nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Brown the oysters in a very hot dish. Oysters must be drained well and the dish must be very hot so they sear and brown rather than steam. Excess moisture lowers the surface temperature and prevents browning, leaving the oysters pale 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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