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Oyster Cocktail

A chilled oyster dish served with a tomato-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strain off the liquor from the oysters.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, tomato ketchup, Tabasco sauce, vinegar, and salt.

  3. Put the mixture on ice.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 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
Form the main body of the cocktail, adding briny, savoury flavour and a soft, tender texture.
Tomato ketchup
Provides the sweet, tomato-based body of the sauce that the oysters sit in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the sweetness of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that lifts the flavour and keeps the sauce tangy.

The step that matters

Chilling the sauce. Cold slows bacterial growth in raw shellfish and keeps the sauce's acidity crisp. Oysters warm quickly, so the sauce should be well chilled and the cocktail kept cold until it is eaten.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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