Skip to main content
Drink

Sauce for Raw Oysters

A vinaigrette sauce for raw oysters made with tarragon vinegar, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, salt, lemon juice, and grated onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tarragon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,547 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sauce for Raw Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, slowly mix the tarragon vinegar into the olive oil while beating constantly.

  2. Add the juice of the lemon and the remaining ingredients.

  3. Grate the onion finely and mix it in.

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. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Tarragon + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tarragon vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oysters.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel, and forms a loose emulsion with the vinegar when beaten.
Onion
Contributes pungent, aromatic flavour that adds savoury bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Beating the vinegar into the oil. Vinegar and oil do not mix on their own. Adding the vinegar slowly while beating breaks it into tiny droplets suspended in the oil, so the sauce stays combined instead of separating into layers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, olive, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, olive, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes