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Oysters a LA Mode

A sauce of lemon juice, anchovy essence, and cream served with oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 798 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Oysters a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix lemon juice and anchovy essence in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Stir until smooth and thick like cream.

  3. Add oysters and warm them through.

  4. Stir in the cream and heat gently.

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. Cream + anchovytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds a savoury, salty depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the cream gently. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils or is heated too quickly, so it should be stirred in over low heat and kept warm rather than brought to a boil.

“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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