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Oysters Fricasseed

A creamy oyster stew with butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oysters Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters, preserve the liquor, and remove the gills.

  2. Combine the oysters with 1 oz. of butter and a little oyster liquor.

  3. Season with salt, nutmeg, and pepper.

  4. Stir over the fire for 2 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the remaining 1 ¼ cups of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook slightly without browning.

  3. Dilute the flour mixture with the oyster liquor, remaining oyster liquor, and white stock.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Simmer for about 10 minutes.

  6. Add the cream, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

  7. Stir over the fire for a few seconds to bind the yolks.

  8. Pass the sauce through a fine strainer.

Combine and serve

  1. Return it to the saucepan with the oysters and heat thoroughly, but do not allow it to boil.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fried bread and sprigs of 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Form the main body of the dish and provide its briny flavour.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked in butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
White stock
Liquid base that dilutes the roux and carries the sauce's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the sauce, giving it added body and a smooth, velvety texture when gently heated.

The step that matters

Binding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but curdle if the sauce boils. Stirring over the fire only for a few seconds, and keeping the sauce from boiling afterward, keeps it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, cream, egg, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, cream, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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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