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Stewed Oysters

Stewed oysters are cooked with butter, pepper, cream, and flour, then served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Heat fresh oysters in a pan on the stove with their liquor, but do not boil.

  2. Drain the juice into a saucepan and bring it to a boil.

  3. Add ½ cup of butter and some pepper; let it boil.

  4. Stir in 1 pint of cream and thicken slightly with flour.

  5. Once it boils again, add the oysters and more salt if necessary.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Fresh oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the broth a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the liquid into a creamy stew.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the stew becomes slightly thick.

The step that matters

Add the oysters after the liquid re-boils, not earlier. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked. Adding them at the end, once the broth is hot, cooks them just through and keeps them 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.

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