Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Oysters

A dish of oysters stewed in butter, milk, and sherry, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg or mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Walnut and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,230 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from oysters and strain their liquor.

  2. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

Make the stew

  1. Add the oyster liquor to the melted butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the oysters when the mixture is boiling.

  3. Mix the cornstarch with just enough milk to blend it thoroughly.

  4. When the beards of the oysters begin to curl, stir in the cornstarch mixture.

  5. Continue stirring for about 2 minutes, adding salt, pepper, nutmeg or mace, and sherry wine.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 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
Provide the main flavour and tender texture of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the stew a smooth mouthfeel.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk and liquor into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when heated.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must be fully blended into milk before adding, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only when heated near boiling, so the stew should be stirred constantly while it thickens to keep it smooth.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, milk, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, wine):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, milk, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, wine. 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.

More stewed oysters recipes

with Celery 6on Toast 3 See all 229 →

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes