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Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oyster liquor, milk, flour, butter, lemon, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters and boil it for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the milk to the boiling liquor.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Return the strained mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Wet the flour with cold water.

  6. Stir the wet flour into the sauce.

  7. Add the butter.

  8. Season with salt, pepper, and a little parsley.

  9. Stir in the lemon juice after removing the sauce from the heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the oysters and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour the sauce into a gravy boat.

  3. Garnish with slices of boiled egg and celery tops.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and gives it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.
Rice or wheat flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells when heated, giving the sauce body.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and tender texture in the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the wet flour into the sauce. Flour must be wetted with cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Its starch then thickens evenly as the sauce heats, and stirring keeps it from clumping on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, rice, pepper, lemon, oyster):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, rice, pepper, lemon, oyster. 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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