Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Cream. Huitres a LA Creme.

A creamy oyster dish made with oysters, liquor, cayenne pepper, cream, and garnished with truffles and pistachios.

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

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Oyster Cream. Huitres a LA Creme.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove the hard parts from the oysters and pound them in a mortar.

  2. Add a little of their liquor, cayenne pepper, and ½ cup of double cream while pounding.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and mix in another ½ cup of cream.

Mould and steam

  1. Garnish a plain mold with truffles and pistachio nuts, then pour in the mixture.

  2. Steam the mixture very slowly for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with Chablis or champagne sauce and lemon slices.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Oyster + truffletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together304 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Pepper + pistachiotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Truffle + pistachiotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main body and briny flavour of the cream.
Double cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the mixture.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated sea flavour and moisture to the pounded oysters.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture very slowly for 1 hour. Gentle, slow heat lets the mixture set into a smooth, delicate custard. Too much heat can curdle the cream and cause the texture to turn grainy or watery.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, cream, truffle, pistachio):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, cream, truffle, pistachio. 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 oyster cream recipes

Sauce 7Soup 4 See all 4 →

You might also like

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