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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A creamy oyster sauce made with stock, egg yolks, cream, oysters, and oyster liquor, served with fish or poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce with strong chicken or beef stock.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and cook for five minutes.

  3. Stir in the cream, scalded oysters, and oyster liquor.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled whitefish, chicken, or turkey.

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. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oystertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together972 recipes

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

  3. Cream + oystertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they cook gently with the stock.
Cream
Adds fat and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Contributes the briny, savory flavor of the oysters to the sauce.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender bite in the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot or they are added too quickly. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring steadily lets the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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