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Fricasseed Oysters

A buttery sauce of milk, flour, and oyster liquor served over plump oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Melt 4 tablespoons butter with salt, pepper, and cayenne in a saucepan.

  2. Add oysters, shaking pan occasionally until oysters are plump.

  3. Drain oysters and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, combine 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons milk, and 2 tablespoons oyster liquor.

  2. Whisk in 2 tablespoons flour to make a white sauce.

  3. Remove from heat, stir in 2 egg yolks and 4 teaspoons lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Reheat oysters in sauce and serve on wafers or toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, plumped gently in butter so they stay tender and juicy.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that coats the oysters.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it as they gently set, giving a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce and the oyster cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the oysters.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

“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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