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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A simple oyster sauce made by mixing fresh oysters with salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor.

  2. Place the oysters in a marble mortar.

  3. Add the salt, ground mace, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Pound the mixture together until well combined.

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. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,910 recipes

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Forms the base of the ketchup and supplies its briny, savory flavor.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat that balances the briny oysters.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the mixture and draws out moisture from the oysters.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture together until well combined. Pounding breaks the oyster flesh down and evenly distributes the salt and spices. Stopping early leaves uneven seasoning and visible lumps of oyster, so the flavor and texture of the ketchup will vary from spoonful to spoonful.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper. 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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