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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made with turkey boiling liquor, milk, oysters, parsley, flour, and butter.

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. In a saucepan, combine the turkey boiling liquor and milk.

  2. Add the chopped oysters and minced parsley.

  3. Stir in the flour mixed with cold milk.

  4. Add the butter and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Turkey + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together281 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turkey boiling liquor
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the sauce's flavor.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body to the liquid base.
Oysters
Provide the main savory, briny flavor of the sauce.
Rice or wheat flour
Starch that thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixed with cold milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch grains form lumps before they can disperse. Mixing it first with cold milk creates a smooth slurry that thickens the sauce evenly when stirred in.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, milk, oyster, rice, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, milk, oyster, rice, butter. 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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