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Sauce

Oyster Sauce

A sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, brown gravy, shallot, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Scald the oysters in their own liquor for 2 minutes, then remove the gills.

  2. If the oysters are large, halve them.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Add the strained oyster liquor, brown gravy, minced shallot, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  3. Stir until the sauce is smooth, then let it boil.

Finish with oysters

  1. Add the oysters and move the pan to the side until warmed through, but do not let it boil.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, while the flour in it thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth, stable sauce.
Brown gravy
Provides the main savoury body and colour of the sauce.
Oysters
Supply the briny, delicate seafood flavour and tender texture of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and gravy.

The step that matters

Do not let the sauce boil once the oysters are added. Oysters toughen and shrink when overheated, so they should be warmed gently until just heated through.

“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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