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Oyster Catsup

A preserved oyster sauce made with sherry, salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor and skim it.

  2. Pound the oysters in a marble mortar.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the pounded oysters with Sherry and bring to a boil.

  2. Add salt, mace, and Cayenne, then let it boil again.

  3. Skim the mixture, strain it through a sieve, and let it cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the mixture, cork it well, and seal it.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Mace and pepper 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 body and savory, briny flavor of the ketchup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and wine flavor, helping to carry and balance the seasonings.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent note to the mixture.

The step that matters

Skimming and straining before cooling. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise during boiling, and straining through a sieve removes solid bits. This leaves a clearer, smoother liquid that keeps better when bottled.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sherry, 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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