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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made by boiling oysters, then thickening the liquid with butter, milk, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

  1. Heat the oysters in their own liquor until they begin to boil.

  2. Remove the oysters and set them aside.

  3. In the same liquor, add the milk or cream, cold butter, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour stirred into a paste.

  5. Bring to a boil, then add the oysters back into the sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture, and release their liquor to season the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and body, mellowing the sauce into a smooth, creamy base.
Cold butter
Adds fat for silky richness and helps give the sauce a glossy finish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce a smooth, cohesive body.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour paste before boiling. Flour must be stirred into a smooth paste first so it disperses without lumps. Starch thickens the sauce as it heats, so the mixture needs to reach a boil to fully set.

“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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