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Sauce

Oyster Cocktail Sauce

A tangy sauce made with lemon juice, horseradish, onion, Worcestershire, Tabasco, ketchup, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, horseradish, grated onion, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, and ketchup. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Season with black pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + ketchuptop 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

Horseradish
Provides the sharp, pungent heat that gives the sauce its characteristic bite.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.
Ketchup
Supplies sweetness, body and a rich tomato base for the sauce.
White onion
Adds savory, aromatic flavor and a little texture from the grated pieces.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against horseradish, onion, sauce, ketchup, 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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