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Oyster Cocktail

A chilled oyster dish mixed with horseradish, Tabasco, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup 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. Clean and chill the oysters.

  2. Mix the horseradish, Tabasco sauce, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, tomato ketchup, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the chilled oysters to the mixture and stir gently.

  2. Serve in sherry glasses, grapefruit or lemon shells, or in tomato cups.

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 + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horseradish + ketchuptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Horseradish + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Oyster + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main ingredient, served raw and chilled in the cocktail.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the oysters.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and body, rounding out the sauce's sharp flavors.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and tanginess to the sauce.

The step that matters

Clean and chill the oysters. Oysters must be thoroughly cleaned and kept cold because they are eaten raw, and cold temperatures slow bacterial growth and keep the shellfish fresh and firm.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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