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Oyster Catsup

A fermented oyster condiment made with sherry, anchovies, lemon rind, mace, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters and pound them in a mortar.

Simmer

  1. In a saucepan, combine the pounded oysters and their liquor with sherry, anchovies, lemon rind, mace, and peppercorns.

  2. Place the pan on the heat and let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Cool and bottle

  1. Remove from heat and let cool before bottling for use.

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. Sherry + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Oyster + sherrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main savory, briny flavour and body of the ketchup.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury umami that rounds out the flavour as they break down.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, helping to extract flavour from the other ingredients.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic citrus oils that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Gentle simmer. Simmering gently for the full 30 minutes lets the oysters and anchovies break down and release flavour without boiling hard, which can make the liquid cloudy and the flavours harsh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sherry, mace):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Currantfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sherry, mace. 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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