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Curried Oysters

Curried oysters are oysters simmered in a coconut and curry sauce with onions, tomatoes, and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and tamarind match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Open the oysters into a basin, keeping all their liquor.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sliced onion and fry until rich brown.

  4. Stir in more butter and the curry powder.

  5. Gradually add hot water or broth and cover the saucepan.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Simmer and thicken

  1. Add the grated coconut and the sour tamarinds or chopped apple.

  2. Simmer until the apple dissolves and the coconut is tender.

  3. Mix in the flour and water thickening.

  4. Add salt to taste and boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the boiled vegetable marrow and the tomatoes.

Finish with oysters

  1. Stir in the oysters with their liquor and coconut milk.

  2. Let the curry stew gently for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice.

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. Coconut + tamarindtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Tamarind + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tamarindtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together426 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Coconut + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture when gently cooked in the sauce.
Onion
Browning deeply in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the curry.
Curry powder
Blooming spices in fat releases aromatic compounds that define the curry's flavour.
Grated coconut
Adds body, mild sweetness and richness to the sauce as it softens.
Flour
Starch mixed with water thickens the liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Tamarind or apple
Provides acidity that balances the richness of the butter and coconut.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until rich brown. Slow browning through the Maillard reaction develops deep, sweet flavour; pale onions leave the curry tasting flat. Stopping too early or burning it both spoil the base.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, onion, coconut, meat, tamarind, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, onion, coconut, meat, tamarind, flour. 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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