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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A sauce made by boiling oysters with vinegar, sherry, cayenne, mace, and salt, then cooling and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and sherry work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 660 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the oysters and boil them in their own liquor with the vinegar.

  2. Skim off the scum as it rises and boil for three minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and return the liquor to the fire.

  4. Add the sherry wine, Cayenne pepper, mace, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Boil for fifteen minutes, then let it cool before bottling.

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. Vinegar + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 savoury flavour and body of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Sherry wine
Adds depth and a fruity, rounded sweetness to the liquor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the ketchup its pungent bite.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum as it rises. Scum is coagulated protein and impurities from the oysters; removing it as it forms keeps the liquor clear and prevents off, murky flavours from carrying into the finished ketchup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, vinegar, sherry, wine, pepper. 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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