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Oyster Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 oysters and liquor

  1. Open the oysters.

  2. Save the liquor.

  3. Boil the liquor with the oyster beards, mace, and lemon peel.

  4. Place the oysters in cold water.

  5. Drain the oysters.

  6. Strain the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the strained liquor to a saucepan with the drained oysters.

  2. Rub a little flour with butter and milk. Mix in enough butter and milk to create a sauce.

  3. Heat over low flame, stirring constantly until the butter has boiled a few times.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Keep the saucepan warm, but not on the fire to avoid hardening the oysters.

  6. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

  7. Serve.

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
Main ingredient that gives the sauce its briny flavour and body.
Oyster liquor
Savoury liquid base that carries the oyster flavour into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel smooth and rounded.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce by absorbing liquid and gelatinising.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, combining with flour to form the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and oyster flavours.

The step that matters

Keep the saucepan warm, not on the fire. Oysters toughen and firm up when overheated, so the sauce should be held warm off direct heat once the oysters are added to keep them tender.

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.

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