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Oyster Catsup

A sauce made by boiling oysters with wine, port, sherry, spices, anchovies, shallots, lemon peel, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil the oysters with their liquor until the strength is extracted.

  2. Strain the mixture well.

  3. Add wine, port, sherry, mace, white pepper, allspice, ginger, and anchovies to the liquor.

  4. Boil all together for about 15 minutes.

Infuse and bottle

  1. In a jar, place shallots, lemon peel, and horseradish.

  2. Pour the boiling liquor over the ingredients in the jar.

  3. When cold, bottle it along with the spices.

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. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Ginger + shallottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the concentrated briny, savoury base of the sauce when boiled in their liquor.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury umami flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute aromatic sharpness and sweetness to the infused liquid.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the richness of the sauce.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the reduced liquor.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling liquor over the ingredients in the jar. Pouring boiling liquor helps extract flavour from the shallots, peel and horseradish into the sauce. Letting it cool fully before bottling keeps the flavours stable and reduces the risk of spoilage in the bottled sauce.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, wine, sherry, mace, allspice, ginger, shallot):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, wine, sherry, mace, allspice, ginger, shallot. 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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