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Oyster Catsup

A sauce made from fresh oysters, sherry, salt, cayenne pepper, powdered mace, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and cider work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry ethyl pentanoate, which smells yeast, fruit. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Procure very fresh oysters and open enough to fill a pint measure; save the liquor.

  2. Scald the oysters in their liquor with the sherry.

  3. Strain the oysters and chop them finely with the salt, cayenne, and mace until reduced to a pulp.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add the pulp to the liquor and boil again for five minutes, skimming well.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork closely, sealing the corks.

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. Sherry + cidertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sherry + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace 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

Oyster meats
Provide the main body and savory, briny flavor of the ketchup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth when scalded with the oysters.
Cider vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the ketchup its pungent, spicy character.
Powdered mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes that complement the oysters.

The step that matters

Skimming during the second boil. Boiling the oyster pulp with its liquor for five minutes and skimming well removes foam and coagulated proteins, producing a clearer, smoother ketchup with a cleaner flavor.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, meat, sherry, pepper, cider, vinegar):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, meat, sherry, pepper, cider, vinegar. 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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