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Creamed Oysters

Creamed oysters are oysters cooked in a creamy sauce of butter, flour, cream, and egg yolk, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash and pick over the oysters, then cook until plump and edges curl.

  2. Drain the oysters and set aside.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the flour and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually pour in the cream or oyster liquor, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Add the oysters, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the beaten egg yolk.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the toast and sprinkle with chopped 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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
Provide the main flavour and texture of the dish, becoming plump and tender when cooked.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and moisture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps form the roux base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smoother, silkier body.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream sauce. Stirring constantly while adding the cream keeps the flour smooth and prevents lumps. Adding the egg yolk after the sauce has thickened and cooling it slightly helps avoid curdling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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