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Oyster Fritters

Bacon‑wrapped oysters fried in a batter of flour, egg, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters and sprinkle with lemon juice.

  2. Flatten bacon slices and cut each in half crosswise.

  3. Wrap each oyster in a half slice of bacon and trim the edges.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, sift flour and add a pinch of salt.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk and enough tepid water to form a smooth paste.

  3. Add melted butter and mix well; let it stand.

  4. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks and fold into the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each wrapped oyster into the batter, covering completely.

  2. Drop into boiling fat or clarified butter and fry until golden.

  3. Drain and serve garnished with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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 + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the main filling, becoming tender and briny inside the crisp coating.
Flour
Forms the batter structure that sets into a crisp, golden shell when fried.
Egg
The yolk enriches the batter, and the whipped white adds lightness and puffiness.
Streaky bacon
Wraps each oyster, releasing fat and flavour as it cooks and browning the outside.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the batter and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Frying the battered oysters. The fat must be boiling hot when the coated oysters go in. Hot fat sets and browns the batter quickly, giving a crisp shell before the oyster overcooks and the batter absorbs grease.

“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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