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Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, veal gravy or milk, spices, and butter, simmered and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters and liquor

  1. Choose small native oysters and do not open them until ready to use.

  2. Save their liquor and remove the gills from the oysters.

  3. Place oysters, gills, and liquor in a saucepan over heat.

  4. Once oysters look plump and white, remove them with a fork.

Make the flavoured liquor

  1. Add veal gravy or milk to the liquor, along with pepper, lemon peel, mace, and sherry.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes, then strain through a fine sieve and let cool.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and mix in flour.

  2. Gradually add the cooled liquor, then add milk or cream to reach desired quantity.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add oysters and keep warm without boiling.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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 the sauce's seafood character; they are poached then added at the end.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Fine flour
Thickens the butter and liquor mixture into a smooth sauce body.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and creaminess, mellowing the sauce and softening its flavour.
Veal gravy or milk
Adds savoury depth and body to the oyster liquor before straining.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce warm without boiling after adding the oysters. Boiling after the oysters are added can toughen them and can cause the cream or milk to curdle or separate, so gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, veal, pepper, lemon, sherry, butter, flour. 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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