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Oyster Ragout

A savory dish of fried oysters topped with a sauce of chestnuts, wine, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and save all the liquor.

  2. Make a thick batter with egg yolks, nutmeg, lemon peel, lemon juice, flour, and milk or cream.

  3. Dip each oyster into the batter, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in butter until golden brown.

  4. Keep the fried oysters warm by the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the chestnuts in butter until cooked.

  2. Pour out excess fat from the pan, add flour, and rub in a piece of butter.

  3. Add the oyster liquor, mace, and Chablis to the pan and bring to a boil.

  4. Thicken the mixture with beaten egg yolks and cream, then pour over the oysters and serve.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish, cooked in a crisp coating that stays tender inside.
Egg yolks
Bind the batter and thicken the sauce by setting when gently heated.
Flour
Thickens the batter and the sauce, giving body to both.
Bread crumbs
Create a golden, crunchy coating when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and enriches the pan sauce.
Chestnuts
Add starchy body and a mild, nutty sweetness to the ragout.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks and cream. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated, so if the mixture boils after they are added it can curdle and turn grainy. Add them off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly, to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, bread, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, egg, nutmeg, flour, milk, bread, butter. 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.

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