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Curried Oysters

Curried oysters are oysters cooked with onion, butter, curry powder, flour, oyster liquor, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

  1. Heat the oysters in their own liquor and drain.

  2. Fry the minced onion in butter for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and flour until smooth.

  4. Add the oyster liquor and cream, then stir in the oysters.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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, with a tender texture when warmed gently.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion and curry flavor and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Adds briny flavor and liquid that forms the base of the sauce.
Curry powder
Adds the warm spiced aroma that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the oysters. Oysters toughen and shrink when held at high heat for long. Add them to the warm sauce only until heated through and their edges just curl, so they stay tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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