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Pickled Oysters

Pickled oysters prepared by boiling oysters, reducing a seasoned vinegar mixture, then simmering the oysters in the pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Pickled Oysters

2 dozen large oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Put the oysters in a stew-pan with their liquor and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquor into another stew-pan.

  3. Add bay leaf, Cayenne pepper, vinegar, ketchup, mace, allspice, and lemon peel to the liquor.

  4. Boil until reduced by three-quarters.

Cook and serve

  1. Remove gills from oysters and wash them.

  2. Add oysters to the pickle and boil together for 2 minutes.

  3. Serve oysters in rows and strain the liquor over them.

  4. Garnish with lemon slices or barberries.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when briefly boiled in the pickle.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the flavour and preserves the pickle.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tomato-based depth to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Add oysters to the pickle and boil together for 2 minutes. Oysters are delicate and overcooking them makes them tough and shrunken. A short boil is enough to heat them through and let them take on the spiced, acidic flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, vinegar, ketchup, allspice, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, vinegar, ketchup, allspice, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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