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Oyster Cocktails

A chilled appetizer of oysters mixed with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a glass, combine the oysters, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, catsup, salt, and sugar, then mix well.

  2. Serve cold in a sherbet cup or cocktail glass.

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 + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 flavor and tender texture of the cocktail.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sauces.
Catsup
Adds sweetness, tomato flavor, and body to the cocktail sauce.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, sugar. 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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