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Sauce

Oyster Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from oysters, anchovy liquor, lemon, mace, butter, and flour, used to accompany fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters and strain them through a sieve.

  2. Wash more oysters in cold water and remove their gills.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the oysters in a stew-pan and pour the reserved liquor over them.

  2. Add the anchovy liquor, lemon halves, and mace.

  3. Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Melt the butter over heat, then remove the mace and lemon.

  5. Squeeze the lemon juice into the sauce, boil, and stir continuously.

  6. Serve the sauce in a boat.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 body of the sauce as they cook down into the liquid.
Anchovy liquor
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the liquid into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and oyster flavours.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour. Flour needs to be fully cooked in the hot liquid to thicken smoothly and avoid a raw, floury taste; stirring keeps it from lumping or scorching.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, anchovy, lemon, butter, flour. 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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