Skip to main content
Main

Oysters with Anchovy

A simple oyster dish cooked with butter, anchovy paste, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice, served on toast.

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

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 ↓

Oysters with Anchovy

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Melt the butter and anchovy paste together in a chafing dish.

  2. Add the oysters and cook for 3 minutes.

  3. Stir in the cayenne pepper and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve on buttered toast or breakfast biscuits.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 ingredient, cooking briefly in the butter so they firm up and turn tender.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savory depth that comes through the butter and complements the oysters.
Butter
Carries the flavors and adds richness, helping the oysters stay moist as they cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and briny oysters.

The step that matters

Add the oysters and cook for 3 minutes. Oysters overcook quickly; too much heat or time makes them tough and rubbery. A short cook just until their edges curl keeps them plump and tender.

“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 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipes