Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare the liquor

  1. Remove oysters from their liquor and place them in cold water.

  2. In a pot, heat the oyster liquor with the oyster beards, mace, and lemon peel; boil.

  3. Strain the liquor and set aside.

Make and serve the sauce

  1. Drain the oysters and add them to a saucepan with the strained liquor.

  2. Add enough butter and milk to create a sauce, then dust in flour.

  3. Bring to a boil, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 of the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Carries the briny oyster flavour into the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the oysters.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Dusting in the flour. Flour added to hot liquid can clump, leaving lumps. Whisking it in gradually, or into the butter first, lets starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes