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Sauce

Oyster Sauce for Fish

A savory sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, and seasonings, simmered to thicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters, strain them, and reserve their liquor.

  2. Wash and remove gills from the oysters, then drain them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the oysters, fresh butter, and reserved oyster liquor.

  2. Add flour and water to thicken the sauce.

  3. Season with lemon juice, anchovy liquor, cayenne pepper, ketchup, and lemon peel.

  4. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 texture of the sauce as they cook into it.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce as it heats.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated oyster flavour and salinity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water. Flour needs to be fully dispersed and heated to cook out its raw taste and to thicken evenly. Adding it to hot liquid without first mixing it smooth can create lumps.

“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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