Skip to main content
Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, oyster liquor, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,516 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters.

  2. Save all the liquor, ensuring it is free from shell and dirt.

  3. Strain the liquor to remove impurities, if necessary.

  4. Remove the beards from the oysters.

  5. Cut large oysters in half.

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the oysters in their liquor until plump.

  2. Remove the oysters from the liquor.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and cream to the liquor.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil until smooth.

  5. Remove any lumps by straining if needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir the oysters into the hot sauce.

  2. Heat for 1-2 minutes without boiling.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely 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 flavour and tender texture of the sauce.
Oyster liquor
Carries the briny oyster flavour and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Cream
Adds body, mild sweetness and a softer, rounder texture.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil until smooth, then keep the oysters from boiling. Flour must be heated long enough to cook out its raw taste and thicken the sauce, but the oysters and cream turn tough and curdled if they boil hard, so the final heating is kept gentle.

“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.

More oyster sauce recipes

White 10for Fish 8for Turkey 8Mock 5Brown 4 See all 287 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes