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Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters in their own liquor and remove the gills.

  2. Strain the liquor and let it settle.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and add flour to thicken the sauce, frying it slightly.

  2. Pour in the oyster liquor and enough cream to achieve the desired thickness.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne, then add the oysters.

  4. Alternatively, stew the gills with the liquor and mace for about 30 minutes, then strain.

  5. Add the oysters to the strained liquor and bring to a gentle boil, adding butter mixed with flour and a little cream or milk.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 the body of the sauce.
Fresh butter
Carries flavour and gives the sauce richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquor into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, loosening the sauce to the desired thickness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Flour must be cooked briefly in the melted butter to form a roux; skipping this leaves a raw, pasty taste and lumps when liquid is added.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, white wine, veal):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, flour, cream, pepper, white wine, veal. 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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