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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from simmered oysters, lemon juice, mace, anchovy mixture, horseradish, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Simmer the oysters in their own liquor until they are plump.

  2. Strain the liquor through a sieve and wash the oysters clean, removing the gills.

  3. Place the oysters in a saucepan and pour the liquor over them, avoiding any sediment.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the lemon juice, mace, anchovy mixture, and horseradish.

  2. Gently boil the mixture, then remove the horseradish, mace, and any lemon pieces.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the sauce, add the melted butter, and toss everything together.

  4. Boil the sauce again before serving.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Oyster + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce as they simmer in their own liquor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.
Anchovy mixture
Adds a deep savoury, salty flavour that enhances the oysters.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Avoiding sediment when pouring the liquor. Oyster liquor often holds grit from the shell. Pouring carefully and leaving the sediment behind keeps the sauce smooth and free of sandy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, anchovy, horseradish, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, anchovy, horseradish, 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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