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Mayonnaise Aux Huitres

A simple dish of oysters served on shells with mayonnaise, mustard, cress, and brown bread with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mayonnaise Aux Huitres

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the oyster shells.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread a little mayonnaise on each shell.

  2. Sprinkle with mustard and cress.

  3. Place an oyster on each shell, leaving the gills on.

  4. Serve with small rolls of brown bread and butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Oyster + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main savoury, briny flavour and are the centre of the dish.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat that softens the briny taste of the oysters.
Brown bread
Offers a sturdy, slightly nutty base to eat alongside the oysters.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that pairs with the bread.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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