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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A sauce made from oysters, 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the liquor

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

  2. Strain the oysters.

  3. Add the liquor to an equal quantity of wine, port, and sherry.

  4. Add mace, white pepper, allspice, ginger, and anchovies.

  5. Boil for 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
Give the catsup its main savoury, briny flavour through their liquor.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.
Shallots
Contribute a mellow, aromatic onion-like sharpness to the infusion.
Wine
Adds acidity and body to the liquid base.

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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