Name: Oysters a LA Mode
Ingredients: 2 oysters; thin broad slice of fat bacon; bread sippets

Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

2 oysters
thin broad slice of fat bacon
bread sippets

Directions

Prepare

Remove gills from the oysters.
Wrap each oyster in a slice of bacon and secure with small skewers.

Cook and serve

Roast the wrapped oysters in a Dutch oven over the fire.
Serve on bread 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.

Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 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: Form the main filling, becoming tender and juicy as they cook inside the bacon.
Fat bacon: Bastes the oysters with rendered fat and adds savory, browned flavor during roasting.

“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.