Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, their liquor, spices, and butter, served with poultry or fish.

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

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Combine oysters and reserved liquor in a covered saucepan.

  2. Add mace and nutmeg, then simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a separate saucepan.

  2. Mix the melted butter with the oyster liquor.

  3. Pour the butter mixture into a sauceboat.

  4. Add the oysters to the sauceboat.

  5. If desired, add chopped boiled celery for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled poultry or fresh fish.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mace + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and body of the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated oyster flavor and moisture to the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Nutmeg
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Simmering the oysters on low heat. Gentle heat cooks the oysters just until firm, since high heat or long cooking toughens their protein and makes them rubbery.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, mace, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, mace, nutmeg, butter. 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes