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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A thick sauce made from boiled oysters, molasses, mace, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil the shelled oysters in a mortar until they form a paste.

  2. Combine the oyster paste with molasses, mace, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

  2. Preserve the liquid in well-stopped bottles.

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

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

  3. Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,910 recipes
  4. Molasses + macetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together724 recipes
  5. Molasses + peppertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Supply the savory, briny base and body once broken down into a paste.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a thick, rich body.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Pepper
Adds a sharp, pungent note that cuts through the sweetness.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, molasses, 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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