Name: Raw Oysters
Ingredients: raw oysters; chopped celery; ice

Why it works: Oyster and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,131 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Raw Oysters

Ingredients

raw oysters
chopped celery
ice

Directions

Prepare

Cut small squares of ice.

Serve

Use a hot flat-iron to make a place large enough to lay a raw oyster and a small quantity of chopped celery.
Serve the oysters on the ice, allowing guests to season them to their taste.

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.

Oyster + celerytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,131 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw oysters: Are the main dish, served raw so their briny flavor and tender texture come through unchanged.
Ice: Keeps the oysters cold and chilled while they are served.

“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.