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Oyster Sauce

A sauce made with oysters, butter, flour, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Tracy, Suzanne. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,175 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: worcestershire sauce

Directions

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Melt one-third cupful of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add juice of half a lemon.

  3. Stir in one tablespoonful of flour, pepper, salt, and a dash of cayenne.

  4. Add one pint of oysters and cook in their own liquor until they boil.

  5. Skim out the oysters and add enough water to the liquor to make one pint.

  6. Return the liquor to the saucepan with the butter and flour mixture and cook until thickened.

  7. Add the oysters back to the sauce and season to taste.

Make the browned butter

  1. Melt three tablespoonfuls of butter in a separate pan.

  2. Add one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce, one tablespoonful of vinegar, one teaspoonful of lemon juice, and one-fourth teaspoonful of salt.

  3. Brown the butter, then heat the vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and salt; add to the browned butter.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with broiled.

By Tracy, Suzanne. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Oyster + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,175 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,197 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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 flavor and tender body of the sauce as they cook briefly in their own liquor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browning the butter adds a nutty aroma.
Flour
Thickens the liquor into a smooth, cohesive sauce when cooked with the butter.
Worcestershire sauce (in the method)
Adds savory depth and tang to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the oysters in their own liquor. Oysters turn tough and rubbery if overcooked, so they should only be brought to a boil and then removed from the heat, while the liquor is kept for the sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Grapeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Cherryabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Plumabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, oyster, butter, vinegar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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