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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A sauce made by pounding oysters with salt, mace, cayenne, and sherry, then boiling and filtering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor.

  2. Pound the oysters in a marble mortar with salt, mace, and cayenne.

  3. Add the sherry to the pounded oysters.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the mixture and skim off the scum.

  2. Rub the residue through a sieve.

  3. When cold, bottle the liquor for use.

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. Mace + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Oyster + sherrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,910 recipes

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 body of the catsup, breaking down into the liquid.
Salt
Seasons the mixture and draws out moisture from the oysters.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture and skim off the scum. Boiling coagulates proteins that rise as scum; skimming removes them so the catsup stays clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sherry. 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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