Name: Oysters with Sherry
Ingredients: 6 small oysters per person; 2 tablespoons sherry wine; a few grains of salt; a few grains of cayenne pepper

Why it works: Sherry and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Oysters with Sherry

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

6 small oysters per person
2 tablespoons sherry wine
a few grains of salt
a few grains of cayenne pepper

Directions

Prepare

Remove the gills from the oysters.
Pour sherry wine over the oysters and sprinkle with salt and cayenne.

Rest and serve

Let stand in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
Serve in cocktail glasses.

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.

Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,066 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Oyster + sherrytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together340 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + winetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Form the main dish, served raw with their briny flavour intact.
Sherry wine: Adds acidity and aroma that balance the brininess of the oysters.

“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.