Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Creamed oysters served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Oysters on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour thoroughly, adding a little cold milk before stirring into the hot milk.

  3. Cook the mixture until thickened.

Cook the oysters

  1. Simmer the oysters in their liquor for about five minutes, then skim them out and add to the cream sauce.

Serve

  1. Prepare thin slices of crisp toast and lay them on a heated platter.

  2. Pour the creamed oysters over the toast and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps blend the flour smoothly.
Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, with their briny flavour carried into the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the hot milk. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid without being evenly blended with fat and a little cold milk first. Mixing it smoothly before adding it to the hot milk, then cooking until thickened, gives a lump-free sauce.

“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

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes