Name: Oyster Catsup
Ingredients: 1 pint oysters; 2 cups wine (sherry or sour wine); 2 tablespoons coarse sea salt; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Why it works: Wine and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,066 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

1 pint oysters
2 cups wine (sherry or sour wine)
2 tablespoons coarse sea salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions

Cook the ketchup

Pound the oysters in a mortar.
Add the wine and bring to a boil.
Stir in the salt and cayenne pepper.
Let it boil again, then strain through a sieve.

Bottle

Bottle the mixture when cold.

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.

Wine + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,066 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + winetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Supply the main flavor, and once pounded and boiled, body to the sauce.
Wine: Adds acidity and liquid, and carries the flavor of the oysters.

“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.