Name: Oyster Sauce
Ingredients: 2 quarts of oysters; ½ cup of oyster liquor; ¼ teaspoon of mace; ½ pound of butter; 2 tablespoons of flour

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquor

Wash the oysters to remove grit.
Let the oyster liquor stand to settle.
Drain the settled liquor into a saucepan.
Add mace to the liquor.
Bring the liquor to a boil.

Make the sauce

Mix flour into softened butter until smooth.
Stir the butter mixture into the boiling liquor.
Let the mixture boil again.
Add the oysters to the boiling mixture.
Bring to a boil once more.

Serve

Serve in an oyster dish.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,405 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,582 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,910 recipes

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: Form the main body of the sauce and provide its savory, briny flavor.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour: Thickens the liquor into a smooth sauce when mixed with butter and heated.
Oyster liquor: Provides the liquid base and concentrated oyster flavor for the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing flour into the butter before stirring into the liquor. Mixing flour with softened butter (a beurre manié style blend) before adding it to hot liquid helps prevent lumps, because the flour is coated with fat and disperses evenly as it heats and thickens.