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Curried Oysters

Curried oysters are oysters cooked with butter, onion, curry powder, coconut, tamarind or apple, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and tamarind match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Open the oysters into a basin, keeping their liquor.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sliced onion and fry until rich brown.

  4. Stir in more butter and the curry powder, mixing well.

Make the curry

  1. Gradually add hot water or broth, cover, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add grated coconut and chopped sour tamarind or apple, and simmer until tender.

  3. Mix in the thickening and salt, and boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the boiled vegetable marrow and tomatoes, if using.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the oysters with their liquor and coconut milk, and simmer gently.

  2. Finish with the strained juice of half a lemon before serving.

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. Coconut + tamarindtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Tamarind + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Coconut + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sea oysters
Are the main protein, cooking gently to stay tender and briny in the sauce.
Onion
Frying until rich brown builds sweet, deep savoury flavour as the base of the curry.
Curry powder
Provides the spice aroma and colour that define the dish, bloomed in butter to release flavour.
Grated coconut
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving a creamy texture and mild sweetness.
Flour and water thickening
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that clings to the oysters.
Sour tamarind or apple
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the coconut and butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the oysters and simmering gently. Oysters toughen and shrink when boiled hard, so they should be added late and kept at a gentle simmer only until just cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, onion, coconut, meat, tamarind, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, onion, coconut, meat, tamarind, flour. 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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