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Oysters a LA Mode

Baked oysters with a sauce of flour, butter, cayenne, lemon, egg yolks, cream, wine, anchovy sauce, anchovies, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, cayenne, lemon juice, egg yolks, cream, Chablis, and anchovy sauce until it boils.

  2. Mix in the chopped anchovies, scalded oysters, and whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold, sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with butter pieces.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with heat.
Egg whites
Whipped, they add lightness and help the mixture rise and set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and browns the bread-crumb topping.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a stable base for the sauce.
Oysters
Main seafood, adding briny flavor and tender texture to the dish.
Chablis wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Whipped egg whites. Egg whites must be whipped to soft peaks and folded in gently. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the dish bakes flat and dense instead of light.

“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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