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Fricasseed Oysters, with Mushrooms

A creamy oyster dish cooked with mushrooms, butter, flour, cream, mushroom liquor, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricasseed Oysters, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, melt the butter and whisk in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the cream and mushroom liquor, stirring constantly.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the oysters and mushrooms; cook until the oysters plump.

  2. Slowly stir in the beaten egg yolks to avoid curdling.

  3. Cook for 1 minute until the yolks are creamy; season and serve on toast.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 body and briny flavour of the dish.
Cream
Forms the richness and smooth body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding creaminess and colour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture alongside the oysters.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if added too quickly or overheated. Adding them slowly while stirring, over controlled heat, lets them blend into the sauce smoothly and gives a creamy result.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

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