Name: New York Counts Oyster Sauce
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons tomato catsup; 3 tablespoons hot water; 2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar; 1 tablespoon grated horseradish; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon flour; optional: a few drops of Tabasco sauce or grains of cayenne

Why it works: Tarragon and horseradish share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 73 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

New York Counts Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons tomato catsup
3 tablespoons hot water
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
1 tablespoon grated horseradish
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon flour
optional: a few drops of Tabasco sauce or grains of cayenne

Directions

Mix together the tomato catsup, hot water, tarragon vinegar, and grated horseradish.
Melt the butter in a pan until slightly browned.
Add the flour to the melted butter and stir for a moment.
Combine the mixed ingredients with the butter and flour, and cook until the sauce thickens smoothly.
Serve hot or cold as preferred. Add Tabasco or cayenne for extra heat if desired.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Tarragon + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together73 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together391 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,547 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together743 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tarragon, vinegar, horseradish, butter, flour, sauce):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Mustardbetter flavor fit
Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, horseradish, butter, flour, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).