Oyster sauce salt, should be added to the sauce, since the oysters should provide all the savoury flavour. However, this method is prohibitively expensive. Many modern oyster sauces are thickened with cornstarch, flavoured with oyster essence or extract and darkened with caramel. Vegetarian oyster sauce prepared from mushrooms, often oyster mushrooms or shiitake mushrooms, is also popular and generally lower in price. It may contain more taste enhancers if less mushroom extract is used to reduce costs. Most of the oyster sauces available on the market contain added monosodium glutamate (MSG). In recent years MSG-free varieties can also be found. The taste
Eastern oyster Eastern oyster The eastern oyster ("Crassostrea virginica")—also called Wellfleet oyster, Atlantic oyster, Virginia oyster, or American oyster—is a species of true oyster native to the eastern seaboard and Gulf of Mexico coast of North America. It is also farmed in Puget Sound, Washington, where it is known as the Totten Inlet Virginica. Eastern oysters are and have been very popular commercially. Today, less than 1% of the original 17th-century population (when the original colonists arrived) is thought to remain in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, although population estimates from any era are uncertain. The eastern oyster is the state