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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A liquid sauce made from boiled oysters, wine, lemon, spices, and shallots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor.

  2. Boil the liquor and skim it.

  3. Remove gills from the oysters.

  4. Pound the oysters in a marble mortar.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the pounded oysters in their liquor with white wine for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through muslin.

  3. Add lemon juice, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and ginger.

  4. Boil for another 10 minutes.

  5. Add shallots.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the mixture with shallots and spices.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 body of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and liquid, helping extract flavour from the oysters.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Shallots
Add a mild, sharp allium aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the pounded oysters for 30 minutes. Boiling extracts flavour from the pounded oysters into the liquid. Pounding first breaks down the flesh so more flavour can be released, and the boil must be steady to draw it out without scorching the mixture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, white wine, lemon, nutmeg, ginger, shallot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, white wine, lemon, nutmeg, ginger, shallot. 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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