Skip to main content
Main

Fricasseed Oysters

A sauce of butter, milk, flour, and lemon, with oysters simmered and served on toast or canapés.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Start the pan

  1. Place all ingredients except the oysters in a chafing dish or saucepan and heat.

  2. Add the oysters to the hot mixture.

  3. Cover the pan.

  4. Shake the pan occasionally.

Drain and hold the oysters

  1. Drain the oysters.

  2. Keep the oysters warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Add enough milk to the liquid in the pan to make a sauce.

  2. Cook the butter, milk, and oyster liquor with the flour to make a white sauce.

  3. Beat the egg yolks until thick.

  4. Add the sauce and lemon juice to the beaten yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the oysters in the sauce.

  2. Serve on toast, wafers, canapés, or timbales.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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 + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 flavor and a tender, delicate texture as the central ingredient.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding body and creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding richness and a silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the beaten yolks. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding the hot sauce gradually while whisking warms the yolks gently, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes