Name: Oyster Cocktail
Ingredients: 48 oysters; 3 tablespoons ketchup; 8 teaspoons lemon juice; 12 dashes Tabasco sauce; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons horseradish; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce; finely minced parsley for garnish

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Allow four oysters per serving.
Mix the oysters with ketchup, lemon juice, Tabasco sauce, salt, horseradish, and Worcestershire sauce. Chill the mixture well.
Serve with a sprinkle of finely minced parsley on top.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Ketchup + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together223 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Form the main body of the cocktail and provide its briny, savoury flavour.
Ketchup: Adds sweetness and body to the sauce that coats the oysters.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the sauce.
Horseradish: Adds pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the oysters.

“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.