Skip to main content
Sauce

For Oyster-sauce

A sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, cream, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

For Oyster-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the oysters

  1. Place the oysters and their liquor in a small saucepan.

  2. Heat the saucepan until it boils to blanch the oysters.

  3. Remove the saucepan from the heat as soon as it boils.

  4. Strain the oyster liquor into a basin.

  5. Remove the oysters from the saucepan and place them on a plate.

  6. Remove the gills and hard parts from the oysters, leaving only the soft part.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the butter and flour, mixing well with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the strained oyster liquor to the stewpan.

  3. Heat the stewpan, stirring until the mixture boils and thickens.

  4. Stir in the cream and heat until it boils again.

  5. Remove the stewpan from the heat and place it on a paper on the table.

  6. Add the lemon juice and a few grains of Cayenne pepper to taste.

  7. Cut the trimmed oysters into small pieces and mix them into the stewpan.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 the soft texture of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the liquor with butter into a smooth, stable base.
Cream
Adds body and mild richness to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the oysters.

The step that matters

Heat the stewpan until the mixture boils and thickens. Flour must be cooked while stirring until the mixture boils; otherwise the sauce stays pasty and tastes of raw flour. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan.

“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

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes