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Sauce

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

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.

Prepare 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.

Simmer the spices

  1. Add mace, white pepper, allspice, ginger, and anchovies to the mixture.

  2. Boil everything together for about 15 minutes.

Steep and bottle

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

  2. Pour the boiling liquor over the shallots and spices.

  3. When cold, bottle the mixture.

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 ketchup its main savoury, briny flavour and body as they are boiled into the liquor.
Anchovies
Add deep savoury umami that rounds out the sauce without tasting fishy.
Shallots
Contribute sharp aromatic flavour that mellows as they steep in the hot liquor.
Wine
Provides acidity and liquid that carries the extracted flavours.
Port
Adds sweetness and richness, balancing the sharpness of the wine and sherry.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling liquor over the shallots and spices. The liquor must be hot enough to draw flavour out of the shallots, lemon peel and horseradish while they steep. Pouring it in while still boiling also helps keep the bottled mixture from spoiling.

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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