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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, mace, nutmeg, butter, and oyster liquor, served with poultry or fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the oysters

  1. Save a little of the oyster liquor.

  2. Put the oysters with the remaining liquor, mace, and nutmeg in a covered saucepan.

  3. Simmer on hot coals for about 10 minutes.

  4. Drain the oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, prepare melted butter mixed with the reserved oyster liquor.

  2. Pour the butter mixture into a sauceboat.

  3. Add the oysters.

  4. Optionally, add chopped boiled celery for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled poultry or fresh fish.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 seafood flavor of the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Carries the oyster flavor and salinity into the butter, seasoning the sauce.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the oysters.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aromatic note that complements the oysters.

The step that matters

Simmer the oysters gently until they just firm. Oysters are delicate and overcooking makes them tough and shrunken, so simmer only until the edges curl and they firm slightly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, mace, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, mace, nutmeg, 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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