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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oyster juice, water, salt, flour, milk, oysters, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare

  1. Separate the oysters from the juice.

  2. If there isn't enough juice, add water.

  3. Season the juice and bring it to a boil.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix flour smoothly with milk and add to the boiling juice to thicken.

  2. After boiling for several minutes, add oysters and let them scald.

  3. Remove from heat and add butter, stirring until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with poultry.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Oyster juice
Forms the flavourful liquid base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it boils.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the sauce's flavour when combined with the flour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and milk. Flour mixed smoothly with milk before it goes into the boiling juice prevents lumps. Starch needs to be fully dispersed and heated to thicken evenly, so the sauce stays smooth.

“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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