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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A fermented oyster sauce made with sherry, anchovies, mace, cayenne pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Carefully open the oysters and wash them in their own liquor.

  2. Strain the liquor to remove any shell particles.

  3. Pound the oysters in a mortar and combine with the liquor.

Cook the ketchup

  1. Add 1 cup of sherry and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.

  2. Stir in the pounded anchovies, coarse sea salt, pounded mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Boil again, skim, and then rub the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Bottle the catsup when cold and seal it.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Sherry + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Oyster + sherrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 body and briny, savoury flavour of the ketchup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, and helps carry the flavours of the other ingredients.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury umami that rounds out the oyster flavour.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam carries impurities and proteins from the oysters that would cloud the sauce and taste scummy. Skimming during each boil keeps the ketchup clear and clean-flavoured before it is sieved and bottled.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sherry, pepper. 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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