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Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, oyster juice, water, flour, milk, and butter, served with poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Separate oysters from the juice. If there isn't enough juice, add ⅓ cup water and season it.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then thicken with 2 tablespoons of flour mixed smoothly with ½ cup milk.

  3. After boiling for several minutes, add ½ pint of oysters to the liquid and let them scald through.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons of butter in small pieces.

  2. Serve immediately with poultry.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 flavour and texture of the sauce, and cook gently as they scald through.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it boils.
Milk
Mixed with the flour to form a smooth paste that adds body and richness.
Butter
Added off the heat to enrich the sauce and give it a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and milk. Flour must be mixed smoothly with milk before it goes into the boiling liquid, otherwise it clumps. Starch swells and thickens the sauce as it heats, so the sauce should be boiling when the paste is added.

“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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