Name: Oyster Cocktails
Ingredients: 12 large oysters; ½ cup catsup; 4 teaspoons prepared horseradish; a few drops lemon juice

Why it works: Horseradish and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Oyster Cocktails

Ingredients

12 large oysters
½ cup catsup
4 teaspoons prepared horseradish
a few drops lemon juice

Directions

Remove the gills from the oysters.
Place 3 or 4 oysters in each cocktail glass.
Pour the catsup, horseradish, and lemon juice over 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.

Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Oyster + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together282 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Oyster + lemontop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,942 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: Serve as the raw, briny main component of the cocktail.
Catsup: Adds sweetness, acidity and a tomato base to the sauce.
Prepared horseradish: Adds sharp heat that cuts through the brininess of the oysters.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its sweetness.