Name: Oyster Sauce
Ingredients: 1 cup oyster liquor; 1 teaspoon celery salt; a pinch of cayenne; 1 cup oysters

Why it works: Oyster and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,131 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

1 cup oyster liquor
1 teaspoon celery salt
a pinch of cayenne
1 cup oysters

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor, celery salt, and cayenne.
Add the oysters and cook for 1 minute.

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.

Oyster + celerytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,131 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Provide the main seafood flavor and tender texture when briefly cooked in the sauce.
Oyster liquor: Adds concentrated briny flavor and liquid that forms the body of the sauce.

“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.