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Oyster Croquettes

Oyster croquettes are fried balls of oysters, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Bring the oysters just to a boil in their own liquor, then drain and cut them into rough pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, then gradually stir in the milk and oyster liquor; boil for two minutes.

  2. Add the oysters and mix everything together.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes on a lightly floured board.

  2. Roll the croquettes in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat for two minutes.

  4. Garnish with chopped parsley.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 filling and the briny, savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that binds the oysters together.
Milk or single cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and moisture.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when the croquettes are fried.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for two minutes. Flour must be cooked for the sauce to thicken fully and lose its raw starchy taste. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that will not hold the croquettes together when shaped and fried.

“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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