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Fricasseed Oysters and Mushrooms

A creamy oyster and mushroom fricassee made with butter, flour, cream, egg yolk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add flour and cook together.

  3. Pour in the cream and stir well.

  4. Add the oysters and mushrooms.

  5. Slowly stir in the egg yolk to avoid curdling.

  6. Cook for a moment until the egg becomes creamy.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 seafood flavor and tender texture as the central ingredient.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, forming the body of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a creamy finish.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the egg yolk. Egg yolk can curdle or scramble when exposed to heat too quickly. Adding it slowly while stirring, and cooking gently in a double boiler, tempers it so it thickens the sauce smoothly.

“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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