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Sauce

Oyster Catchup

A sauce made from fresh oysters, sherry, salt, mace, and cayenne, boiled and strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Catchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor and skim it.

  2. Pound the oysters in a marble mortar.

Make the catchup

  1. In a pot, combine the pounded oysters and sherry, and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the salt, mace, and cayenne, and let it boil again.

  3. Skim the mixture and rub it through a sieve.

Bottle and seal

  1. Once cold, bottle the catchup, cork it well, and seal it.

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

Oysters
Provide the main body and savoury, briny flavour of the catchup.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, and helps extract flavour from the oysters.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cayenne
Adds heat and a sharp, pungent bite.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked oysters through a fine sieve removes solids and fibrous bits, giving a smooth, fluid catchup. Skimming first removes foam and scum that would otherwise cloud the liquid and spoil its clarity and keeping quality.

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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