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Oyster Sauce for a Boiled Cod

A sauce made from oyster liquor, claret, lemon juice, mace, butter, and flour, served with boiled cod.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce for a Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Strain the oysters from their liquor, wash them in cold water, and drain them dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the liquor into a pot, discarding any sediment, and heat it over medium heat.

  2. Add the claret, lemon juice, mace, and butter thickened with flour to the liquor.

  3. Let the mixture almost boil, then add the remaining butter and shake well until melted.

  4. Remove the mace, then add the oysters and let them scald without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce in a sauceboat.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 when gently scalded at the end.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy body as it melts into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquor and butter so the sauce coats the fish.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour that balances the rich butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Let the oysters scald without boiling. Boiling toughens oysters and makes them shrink and curdle, so they should only be heated until the edges curl and the sauce is hot.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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