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Sauce

Oyster Sauce for Entrees

A creamy oyster sauce made with oysters, butter, flour, onions, mushrooms, parsley, scallions, oyster liquor, consommé, heavy cream, salt, pepper, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce for Entrees

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Blanch the oysters in their own liquor and set aside.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a white roux.

  3. Add the onions, mushrooms, parsley, and scallions to the roux.

Make and finish the sauce

  1. Moisten the mixture with the oyster liquor and consommé.

  2. Cook over medium heat until reduced.

  3. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Let the sauce thicken, then strain it through a sieve.

  5. Add the oysters to the sauce and serve with fowl, turkey, or chicken.

  6. If serving with fish, add essence of anchovies.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavor and tender bite in the finished sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and, with the flour, forms the base of the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aromatic depth as they soften in the roux.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the reduced sauce.
Consommé
Supplies the liquid base and savory meaty flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the sauce thicken, then strain it through a sieve. Flour thickens the sauce only as it simmers and reduces, so the sauce should be cooked long enough before straining to remove the onion and herb solids and leave a smooth texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, cream, pepper):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Spinachbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, mushroom, parsley, cream, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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