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Oyster Pie

A pastry pie filled with oysters, eggs, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Roll out the puff pastry twice as thick for the top crust and the usual thickness for the bottom.

  2. Line a pudding dish with the thinner crust and fill it with dry bread or crackers.

  3. Butter the edges of the dish to help lift the upper crust without breaking.

Bake the pie

  1. Cover the filling with the thick crust, ornament the edges, and bake.

Make the filling and serve

  1. Cook the oysters as for a stew, adding 2 beaten eggs and thickening with cracker crumbs or rice flour.

  2. Stew the oysters for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the oysters into the baked crust and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky layers that puff and crisp as the crust bakes.
Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender texture of the filling.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening and enriching the oyster filling.
Cracker crumbs or rice flour
Thickens the oyster liquid so the filling holds together.
Dry bread crusts or crackers
Fills the base of the crust beneath the oysters.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the oysters. Eggs set when heated, so they thicken the filling, but if the mixture boils hard they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle while the oysters stew.

“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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