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Oysters Fricasseed

A buttery oyster dish with ham, onions, parsley, lemon rind, nutmeg, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Oysters Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a chafing dish, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped ham, onion, parsley, lemon rind, and nutmeg; cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the flour, then add the water and meat extract; bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with the cream, then add to the chafing dish along with the oysters.

  2. Stir for a few minutes and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the fricassee.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the aromatics.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle if they get too hot. Add them off the boil and stir gently over low heat so the sauce becomes smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, parsley, lemon, nutmeg, meat, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, parsley, lemon, nutmeg, meat, flour. 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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