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Oysters a LA Mode

A dish of blanched oysters coated in batter and fried, served with lemon juice and fried parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters and press them between two dishes until cold.

  2. Slit the oysters open without severing them and squeeze a little lemon juice inside.

  3. Fold the oysters back together and dip them in frying batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until crisp.

  2. Drain the oysters.

  3. Pile them high on a napkin or paper.

  4. Garnish with fried parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Oyster + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,211 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 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
Serve as the main filling, cooked briefly so the flesh stays tender inside the crust.
Frying batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that seals in moisture while the oyster heats through.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, briny flavour of the oyster.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until crisp. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy before it crisps, and the oyster overcooks. A hot fat sets the batter quickly, keeping the inside tender and the coating crisp.

“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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