Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Curried Oysters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Drain the oyster juice into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Wipe the oysters with a clean cloth, removing any shell pieces.
Make the sauce
In another saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour, mixing until smooth but not browned.
Slowly stir the boiling oyster juice into the flour mixture, constantly stirring to prevent lumps.
Let the mixture boil for a few minutes.
Mix the curry powder with a pinch of corn-starch and a few drops of cold milk or water, then stir into the sauce.
Add salt to taste.
If the sauce is too thin, add more corn-starch mixed with cold milk or water, boil once more, and serve in a dish bordered with rice.
Finish
When the sauce is boiling hard, add the oysters and cook quickly until firm.
Sprinkle parsley over the oysters before serving.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together943 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together16,675 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 ingredient and flavour, and firm up briefly in the hot sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, and carries the flour into a smooth roux.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce as a roux with the butter, giving it body.
- Cream or milk
- Adds richness and a mild sweetness, softening the sauce's flavour.
- Curry powder
- Adds aroma and warm spice flavour to the sauce.
- Corn-starch
- Thickens the sauce further when it is too thin.
The step that matters
Adding the oysters to the boiling sauce. Oysters turn firm and rubbery when overcooked, so they should go in at a hard boil and be cooked only briefly until just firm.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, cream, flour, corn):
- Nutmegfits better
- Capersfits better
- Jalapenofits better
- Parsleythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, cream, flour, corn. 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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