Skip to main content
Sauce

Oyster Catchup

A fermented oyster sauce made with oysters, salt, mace, cayenne pepper, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Oyster Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their liquor.

  2. Combine oysters, salt, mace, and cayenne pepper in a marble mortar.

  3. Pound the mixture well.

Make the sauce

  1. Add wine to the liquor.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve or colander.

  4. Boil the strained liquid again.

  5. Skim the mixture.

  6. Add brandy.

  7. Bottle 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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + winetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mace + brandytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,547 recipes
  5. Mace + winetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Mace and pepper 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

Oysters
Provide the main savoury body and the briny, umami flavour of the sauce.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp pungent note that balances the richness of the oysters.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the cooking liquid.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol that carries flavour, added at the end.

The step that matters

Skim the mixture. Skimming removes foam and coagulated proteins that rise as the liquid boils, keeping the sauce clear and preventing a scummy texture and off flavours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, wine, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, wine, brandy. 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.

More oyster sauce recipes

White 10for Fish 8for Turkey 8Mock 5Brown 4 See all 287 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesWine Sauce for Sweet PuddingsWine Sauce for Sweet Puddings6 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes