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Oyster Ketchup

A preserved oyster condiment made by boiling oysters with sherry, salt, cayenne, mace, and oyster liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open oysters and set aside the liquor to fill a pint measure.

  2. Scald oysters in sherry, then strain them.

  3. In a mortar, combine oysters with salt, cayenne, and mace; pound until a pulp forms.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add pulp to reserved liquor and boil for five minutes, skimming well.

  2. Rub mixture through a sieve, then let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork tightly, sealing the corks.

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. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Sherry + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Oyster + sherrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

Pepper and mace 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
Provide the main savoury flavour and, when pounded, the body of the ketchup.
Sherry
Scalds the oysters and adds acidity and aromatic depth.
Cayenne pepper
Adds sharp heat that balances the richness of the oysters.
Ground mace
Adds a warm, spiced aroma.

The step that matters

Skimming during the boil. Skimming while the pulp and liquor boil removes foam and coagulated particles, keeping the ketchup clearer and cleaner-tasting before it is sieved and bottled.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sherry, 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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