Skip to main content
Sauce

Oysters, Sauce Of, Mock

A sauce made from anchovies, water, mace, peppercorns, cloves, flour, butter, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,199 recipes mention both. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Oysters, Sauce Of, Mock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the anchovies, water, mace, peppercorns, and cloves.

  2. Simmer gently until the anchovies dissolve.

  3. Strain the liquid and thicken it with a little flour and butter.

  4. Mix in enough milk or cream to make a total of ½ pint.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mace + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together76,993 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + milktop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Anchovies
Dissolve into the liquid to give the sauce a salty, savoury depth.
Flour
Thickens the strained liquid so it coats the back of a spoon.
Butter
Combines with the flour to form a roux that thickens and enriches the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds body and mellows the sauce, bringing it to the final volume.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the anchovies dissolve. Boiling hard can make the sauce cloudy and bitter, while gentle heat lets the anchovies break down slowly and release their flavour into the liquid.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mace, flour, butter, milk):

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against mace, flour, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes