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Oyster Rissoles

A savory dish of oysters mixed with butter, flour, stock, eggs, milk, lemon, nutmeg, and truffle, formed into rissoles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the flour and let it color.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir in the oysters and let them stew in the pale stock mixed with their own liquor.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk, lemon juice, nutmeg, and truffle.

  3. Cook until heated through and serve.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main filling and a briny, savory flavor as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the flour base.
Flour
Cooked in the butter, it thickens the stock into a binding sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they heat, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.
Truffle
Contributes a strong, earthy aroma to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the mixture boils. Keep the heat low and stir constantly once the yolks, milk, and lemon juice go in, so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

“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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