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Oyster Cocktail

A chilled oyster cocktail served in tall glasses with cayenne, salt, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and horseradish.

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 Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the oysters and place them in tall punch glasses.

  2. Add a dash of cayenne and a pinch of salt to each glass.

  3. Pour in 2 ½ tablespoons of tomato ketchup and 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce.

  4. Add a few drops of lemon juice and a little fresh horseradish.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Ketchup + horseradishtop 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

Fresh oysters
Provide the main shellfish body and briny flavour that the sauce surrounds.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and a thick, moist base to the cocktail sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and a fermented, umami note to the sauce.
Fresh horseradish
Adds sharp heat that cuts through the richness of the oysters and ketchup.

The step that matters

Serve very cold. Oysters are best served chilled because low temperature keeps them firm and fresh-tasting and slows spoilage. Serving them warm makes them soft and more prone to off flavours.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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