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Oyster Cocktail
Oysters 2 tablespoons tomato catsup 1 tablespoon horseradish 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 1 tablespoon vinegar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon minced onion 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce Mix ingredients. Keep in refrigerator for several hours and serve 1 1/2 tablespoons for every five oysters. Serve 5 oysters to each cup.
A raw oyster cocktail of the kind that opened formal dinners for most of the twentieth century. The recipe gives no oyster count because the sauce is measured out against however many you shuck; the finished sauce comes to roughly 7 tablespoons.
- YieldThe sauce comes to about six and a half tablespoons, so at 1 1/2 tablespoons per five oysters it dresses roughly 20 oysters, or four servings of five each. Scale the sauce, not the oysters, if you want more or fewer portions.
- The chilling is the pointSeveral hours in the refrigerator is not padding. Raw minced onion and horseradish are harsh straight from the bowl, and the resting time lets them settle into the catsup and vinegar. Make the sauce the day before if it suits your schedule.
- Oysters, cold and last-minuteShuck as close to serving as possible, keep the oysters on ice, and dress them only when the cups go to the table. Sauce left sitting on raw oysters begins to firm and cloud their edges within minutes.
- Heat levelHalf a teaspoon of Tabasco across roughly six and a half tablespoons of sauce is noticeable but not fierce. Taste after the sauce has rested and adjust.
- CatsupBottled catsup of this era was often thinner and less sweet than today's ketchup, so you may want a little more vinegar or lemon to bring the sauce back into balance.
- HorseradishThe recipe does not specify; prepared horseradish in vinegar is the likely intention. If you grate it fresh, start with rather less and adjust, since fresh root is considerably stronger.
- SourcingBuy oysters from a supplier who can show tags or harvest dates, keep them below 40F, and discard any that gape and will not close. Raw shellfish is not advisable for pregnant women, young children, older adults, or anyone with liver disease or a compromised immune system.
- ServingThe recipe says only "cup"; a stemmed cocktail or sherbet glass set in crushed ice would have been the usual vessel. Small forks or picks for eating.
The oyster cocktail was an American restaurant and hotel dish of the later nineteenth century, its origin usually attributed to San Francisco, though that attribution is traditional rather than documented. Its spread depended on cheap bottled catsup and Worcestershire sauce and on iced rail transport that carried oysters inland. It remained a common cold first course into the 1920s and 1930s, needing no oven space at the busiest hour.