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Avocado Cocktail

A chilled avocado dish served with a tomato ketchup and lemon juice sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Avocado and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,385 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Avocado Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the avocados into small pieces and place them in glasses.

  2. In a bowl, mix the tomato ketchup, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to make the cocktail sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the cocktail sauce over the avocado pieces.

  2. Serve with chopped ice.

  3. Alternatively, mash the avocados and mix with the cocktail sauce, then serve in the same manner.

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. Avocado + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,385 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Avocado + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together800 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Avocados
Provide the creamy, mild body that forms the base of the cocktail.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and colour to the cocktail sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and slows browning of the avocado.

The step that matters

Serving the avocado in the cocktail sauce. Avocado flesh discolours quickly once cut and exposed to air. Coating the pieces promptly with the acidic lemon-ketchup sauce and serving soon after limits browning and keeps the texture fresh.

Swap the avocado

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, ketchup, lemon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Avocadothe original
  4. Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, ketchup, lemon, pepper. 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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