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Oyster Cocktail

A chilled appetizer of oysters topped with tomato sauce, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,592 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and place them in cocktail glasses surrounded by ice.

  2. Pour 3 tablespoons of tomato catsup over each oyster.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon of strained tomato juice to each glass.

  4. Drizzle ¼ teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce and 1 drop of Tabasco sauce over the oysters.

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

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

  2. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Oyster + tomatotop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together534 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main raw seafood base that the sauce is served over.
Tomato catsup
Supplies sweetness, acidity and body to form the cocktail sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness of the tomato catsup.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, tomato, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, tomato, sauce. 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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