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Curry of Oysters

A curry sauce with oysters served over plain boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curry of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and cook the sliced onion until golden.

  2. In the butter, mix the flour, curry powder, and salt.

  3. Drain the oysters and boil the oyster liquor, skimming it. Add the oyster liquor, stirring until boiling.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a griddle and cook the oysters a few at a time until browned on both sides.

  2. Transfer the cooked oysters to the sauce and serve hot over a border of plain boiled rice.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 ingredient; browning on the griddle adds savory flavor and texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and curry mixture so the sauce becomes body-rich rather than watery.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it turns golden, forming the base flavor of the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish, bloomed briefly in the hot butter.
Butter
Carries the onion and spices and adds rich fat flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the oysters on the griddle. Oysters overcook quickly and turn rubbery, so cooking them a few at a time in a hot pan keeps them tender and gives browned surfaces through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, oyster, flour, rice. 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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