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Austern Sauce — Oijstcr Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, stock, butter, flour, spices, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Austern Sauce — Oijstcr Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oyster stock

  1. Open the oysters and reserve their liquor.

  2. Remove the gills from the oysters and place them in a saucepan with white stock, crushed peppercorns, bay leaf, lemon peel, and oyster liquor.

  3. Boil for a few minutes and strain the mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in the saucepan, add flour to thicken the sauce.

  2. Stir in powdered mace or nutmeg and the strained mixture until thick and smooth.

  3. Remove from heat, add oysters, lemon juice, white wine, white pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in egg yolks and heat gently without boiling to avoid hardening the oysters.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with heat and liquid into a smooth body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour forms the thickening base.
Oysters
Provide the main briny flavour and tender texture in the finished sauce.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that gives the sauce its body and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Heating after the egg yolks are added. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat but scramble and turn grainy if boiled. Heating only gently keeps the sauce smooth, and it also keeps the oysters from hardening.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, butter, flour, mace, white wine, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, butter, flour, mace, white wine, egg. 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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