Name: Oyster Cocktail
Ingredients: 6 small oysters; 2 drops Tabasco sauce; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 teaspoon onion juice; ¼ teaspoon salt; 4 tablespoons tomato ketchup

Why it works: Sauce and ketchup 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

Place 6 small oysters in a tumbler.
Add 2 drops of Tabasco sauce, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of onion juice, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and 4 tablespoons of tomato ketchup.
Mix well and place the tumbler in a bowl of cracked ice.
Prepare this cocktail half an hour before serving.

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.

Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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).
Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,233 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + tomatotop 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: Provide the main seafood flavour and the tender, briny body of the cocktail.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.
Tomato ketchup: Supplies sweetness, body and a tomato base for the cocktail sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

Avocadofits better
Limefits better
Lemonthe original
Grapefits about as well

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