Skip to main content

Oysters a LA Maitre D’ Hotel

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,544 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Open the oysters in their deep shells.

  2. Top each oyster with a little Maitre d’Hotel sauce.

  3. Place the oysters on a grill and cook until the liquor boils.

  4. Serve immediately with lemon, brown bread, and butter.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Oyster + breadtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,544 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,175 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together15,317 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Sauce and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 15,317 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sauce, bread, butter):

  1. Applebetter flavor fit
  2. Grapebetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

You might also like

Illustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of White BreadIllustrationWhite Bread80 recipesIllustration of Bread OmeletteIllustrationBread Omelette60 recipes