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Oysters on Toast

Oysters on Toast is a dish of oysters simmered in liquor and cream, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strain the oyster liquor and rinse the oysters to remove shell bits.

  2. Prepare nicely browned toast, moisten it in boiling water, and butter it well.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the oyster liquor with the oysters in a stew-pan and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour, then stir this mixture into the boiling oyster liquor.

Serve

  1. Arrange the toast in a dish and pour the boiling oysters and liquor over it. Serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 flavor and texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling liquor into a light, smooth sauce.
Cream or rich milk
Adds body, richness and mild sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling liquor. Flour mixed with butter must be added to boiling liquid and stirred well so starch swells evenly and the sauce thickens without lumps.

“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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