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Sauce

Oyster Sauce, for Fish

A sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, oyster liquor, water, and anchovy essence, simmered for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce, for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters without boiling them.

  2. Remove the gills.

  3. Strain the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter based on the desired amount of sauce.

  2. Add enough flour to thicken the sauce.

  3. Pour in the oyster liquor.

  4. Add a little water.

  5. Heat over the stove, stirring until it boils.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the oysters.

  2. Add a little anchovy essence.

  3. Heat until hot but do not let it boil.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + anchovytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,753 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the main seafood flavour and texture of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce.
Oyster liquor
Adds concentrated briny oyster flavour and liquid to the sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds a savoury depth that enhances the seafood taste.

The step that matters

Heat until hot but do not let it boil. Once the oysters are added, boiling toughens their proteins, making them rubbery and shrinking them, and can cause the sauce to separate or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps them tender.

“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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