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Oyster Cocktails

A chilled appetizer of oysters topped with a vinaigrette of vinegar, horseradish, ketchup, lemon juice, and Tabasco, served with buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce 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 Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the oysters and serving glasses.

  2. In a bowl, mix vinegar, horseradish, ketchup, lemon juice, and Tabasco sauce.

Serve

  1. Place oysters in chilled glasses and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Serve with a spoon and an oyster fork.

  3. Accompany with thin slices of buttered brown bread.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Horseradish + ketchuptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Oysters
Provide the main briny flavour and soft texture of the cocktail.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the oysters.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the oysters.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that sharpens the sauce's overall flavour.

The step that matters

Chill the oysters and serving glasses. Cold keeps the oysters firm and fresh-tasting and slows spoilage, so they should be chilled before the sauce is added and served.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, vinegar, horseradish, tomato, ketchup, sauce, bread. 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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