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Oyster-Sauce, for Boiled Turkey, Fish, Fyc

A sauce made from oysters, butter, cream, salt, and pepper, used for boiled turkey and fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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, for Boiled Turkey, Fish, Fyc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters just before making the sauce and save their liquor.

  2. Strain the liquor and scald the oysters in it, then boil them gently.

  3. Remove the oysters with a slotted spoon and drain on a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Let the liquor settle, then pour off the sediment into melted butter.

  2. Add enough cream to make the sauce look white and nice.

  3. Pick and remove the gills from the oysters one by one, then return them to the sauce.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the oyster flavour.
Cream
Adds body and a smooth, pale colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the liquor settle before pouring. Oyster liquor holds fine grit that sinks over time. Pouring off the clear liquid leaves the sediment behind, so the sauce stays smooth rather than gritty.

“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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