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Fricassee of Oysters

A creamy oyster dish with butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, parsley, salt, cayenne, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make several triangles of toast and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then whisk in the flour to form a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the sauce is thicker than usual.

  3. In a separate saucepan, cook the oysters until plump.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters to the cream sauce along with the beaten egg yolk, parsley, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Stir over low heat for a moment, then serve hot in a warmed dish, garnished with toast points.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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 flavour and tender bite of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce when cooked with butter as a roux.
Milk
Forms the body of the sauce, carrying the creamy texture.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk to the sauce. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce is too hot it can scramble into lumps. Keep the heat low and stir gently while adding the yolk.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, milk, flour, 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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