Name: Oyster Cocktail
Ingredients: 1 bottle catsup; 1 teaspoon salt; Pinch of pepper; 1 quart oysters

Why it works: Pepper and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,663 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktail

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 bottle catsup
1 teaspoon salt
Pinch of pepper
1 quart oysters

Directions

Prepare

Wash and drain the oysters.
Place them in a cool place for about an hour before serving.

Serve

Mix the catsup, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
Serve the oysters with the catsup mixture.

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.

Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Provide the main flavour and texture of the cocktail, served raw and chilled.
Catsup: Adds sweetness and acidity that complement the briny oysters.

“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.