Name: Oyster Cocktail
Ingredients: 18 oysters; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; 3 tablespoons tomato catsup; 1 teaspoon sherry wine; coarse sea salt to taste; 6 drops Tabasco sauce

Why it works: Tomato and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,759 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the oysters dry.
Mix all ingredients together.
Serve in sherbet glasses.

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.

Tomato + winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,592 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,233 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,469 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: Are the main ingredient, providing the briny, delicate seafood flavor at the centre of the cocktail.
Tomato catsup: Adds sweetness and acidity that give the sauce its body and tangy character.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the catsup.

Swap the lemon

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

Grapefits better
Plumfits better
Pineapplefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, tomato, sherry, wine, 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.