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Oyster Sausages

A savory dish of oysters mixed with breadcrumbs, suet, spices, and eggs, formed into cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove gills from the oysters and chop them, but not too fine.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, chopped suet, mace, salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the yolks of three eggs and the white of one egg.

  4. Mix well and let it sit for 3 to 4 hours.

Form and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes and dust with flour.

  2. Fry the cakes in butter until they are light brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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 flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and rich during frying.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness.
Egg white
Adds moisture and helps bind the cakes together.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside of the cakes.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in butter. Butter browns quickly and can burn before the centres are heated through. Moderate heat lets the cakes brown evenly and cook through without scorching the milk solids.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, pepper, egg, flour, 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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