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Oyster Pie

Oyster pie is a pastry dish filled with oysters, thick white sauce, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a deep pie plate with puff pastry.

  3. Fill the interior with bread crusts and cover with a top crust, buttering the edge underneath.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the oysters for five minutes.

  2. Slowly stir in the thick white sauce and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Remove the bread crusts from the pie, fill with the creamed oysters, and replace the top crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven for five minutes before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 filling and the savory, briny flavor of the pie.
Thick white sauce
Binds the oysters into a creamy, spoonable filling with moisture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently with heat.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, buttery crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the thick white sauce and beaten egg yolks.. Adding egg yolks to hot liquid can scramble them into lumps. Stirring slowly while adding them, and keeping the mixture below a hard boil, lets the yolks thicken the filling smoothly.

“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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