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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, butter or white sauce, lemon juice or capers or vinegar, and optional cream, served over fish, turkey, or chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Make the sauce

  1. Make a drawn butter or white sauce.

  2. Add lemon juice, capers, or vinegar.

  3. Stir in the oysters and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. For a creamier sauce, use part cream instead of all water and omit the lemon juice or vinegar.

  2. Serve over fish, boiled turkey, or chicken.

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 + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lemon + oystertop 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

Butter
Forms the base of the drawn butter sauce, adding richness and smooth body.
Oysters
Provide the sauce's main flavor, salty and briny, and tender texture when heated.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and cuts through its richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a creamier texture when used in place of part of the water.

The step that matters

Stir in the oysters and bring to a boil. Oysters are delicate and overcooking them toughens their texture and can make the sauce taste harsh. Heat just until the edges curl and the sauce is hot.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, oyster, cream. 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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