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Sauce

Oyster Catsup

A sauce made from fresh oysters, mace, cayenne pepper, sea salt, white wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and brandy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 620 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Oyster Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Wash the oysters in their own liquor.

  2. Place the oysters in a marble mortar with the mace, salt, and cayenne pepper, then pound the mixture well together.

Make the ketchup

  1. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan with the white wine and bring to a boil, then cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Boil for an additional 5 minutes.

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. White wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Oyster + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Mace + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Oysters
Provide the main body and briny flavour of the ketchup.
White wine
Acts as the liquid that extracts flavour and thins the mixture as it cooks.
Ground mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that gives the ketchup a sharp, peppery bite.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked oysters through a fine sieve breaks down solids into a smooth liquid. Skipping or rushing this leaves grit and lumps in the finished ketchup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, white wine, brandy):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, white wine, brandy. 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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