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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A fermented oyster sauce made with sherry, anchovies, mace, cayenne, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and mace 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. Open the oysters carefully, reserving their liquor.

  2. If any shell or dirt is present, rinse the oysters in the liquor and strain it.

  3. Pound the oysters in a mortar and add the reserved liquor.

Make the ketchup

  1. For every pint of oyster mixture, add 1 pint of sherry.

  2. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

  3. Add the coarse sea salt, pounded anchovies, pounded mace, and cayenne.

  4. Boil again, skim, and strain through a sieve.

  5. Once cold, bottle and seal the catsup.

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. Sherry + macetop 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

Fine fresh milton oysters
Provide the main body and briny flavour of the ketchup.
Oyster liquor
Adds moisture and concentrated oyster flavour to the pounded mixture.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the rich oyster flavour.
Pounded anchovies
Add savoury depth and umami that reinforce the oyster flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam after each boil. Foam rises as proteins coagulate and impurities surface during boiling. Skimming it removes these before straining, leaving a clearer, cleaner-tasting ketchup.

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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