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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A creamy sauce made with oysters, milk, cream, butter, flour, onion, pepper, parsley, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the milk and cream with the grated onion and minced pepper.

  2. Thicken the mixture with the flour and butter.

Add oysters and finish

  1. When nearly cooked, add the oysters and cook for 5 more minutes.

  2. Finally, stir in the minced parsley and salt.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 texture of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Cream
Adds body and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquid, or it stays lumpy and tastes raw. Stirring while the mixture thickens keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, butter, flour, cream, pepper, parsley. 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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