Prawn cocktail, also known as shrimp cocktail, is a

seafood Seafood is any form of Marine life, sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including Fish as food, fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of Mollusca, molluscs (e.g., bivalve molluscs such as clams, oysters, and mussel ...

dish consisting of shelled, cooked

prawns Prawn is a common name for small aquatic crustaceans with an exoskeleton and ten legs (members of the order of decapods), some of which are edible. The term ''prawn''Mortenson, Philip B (2010''This is not a weasel: a close look at nature's most ...

in a Marie Rose sauce or

cocktail sauce Cocktail sauce, also known as seafood sauce, is one of several types of cold or room temperature sauces often served as part of a dish referred to as a seafood cocktail or as a condiment with other seafoods. The sauce, and the dish for which it i ...

, served in a glass. It was the most popular

hors d'œuvre An hors d'oeuvre ( ; ), appetiser, appetizer or starter is a small dish (food), dish served before a meal in European cuisine. Some hors d'oeuvres are served cold, others hot. Hors d'oeuvres may be served at the dinner table as a part of the ...

in Great Britain, as well as in the United States, from the 1960s to the late 1980s. According to the English food writer Nigel Slater, the prawn cocktail "has spent most of (its life) see-sawing from the height of fashion to the laughably passé" and is now often served with a degree of irony. The cocktail sauce is essentially

ketchup Ketchup or catsup is a table condiment with a sweet and sour flavor. "Ketchup" now typically refers to tomato ketchup, although early recipes for different varieties contained mushrooms, oysters, mussels, egg whites, grapes, or walnuts, amon ...

and

mayonnaise Mayonnaise (), colloquially referred to as "mayo" (), is a thick, creamy sauce with a rich and tangy taste that is commonly used on sandwiches, hamburgers, Salad#Bound salads, bound salads, and French fries. It also forms the base for various o ...

in Commonwealth countries, or ketchup and

horseradish Horseradish (''Armoracia rusticana'', syn. ''Cochlearia armoracia'') is a perennial plant of the family Brassicaceae (which also includes Mustard plant, mustard, wasabi, broccoli, cabbage, and radish). It is a root vegetable, cultivated and us ...

in the United States. Recipes may add

Worcestershire sauce Worcestershire sauce or Worcester sauce (UK: ) is a fermented liquid condiment invented by pharmacists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins in the city of Worcester in Worcestershire, England, during the first half of the 19th century ...

, hot sauce, vinegar, cayenne pepper or lemon juice.

History and origins

A dish of cooked seafood with a piquant sauce of some kind is of ancient origin and many varieties exist. Oyster or shrimp dishes of this kind were popular in the United States in the late nineteenth century and some sources link the serving of the dish in cocktail glasses to the ban on alcoholic drinks during the 1920s

prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic b ...

era in the United States. A version of the shrimp cocktail was popularized in

Las Vegas Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

casinos in the late 1950s, beginning with the Golden Gate Casino on

Fremont Street Fremont Street is a street in Downtown Las Vegas, downtown Las Vegas, Nevada that is the second-most famous street in both the Las Vegas Valley and in the state of Nevada, after the Las Vegas Strip. It is named in honor of explorer and politicia ...

, which sold as many as 2,000 shrimp cocktails daily, at inexpensive prices, no more than 99 cents. The dish is considered somewhat synonymous with the gambling and entertainment mecca. In the United Kingdom, the invention of the prawn cocktail is often credited to British television chef

Fanny Cradock Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey (26 February 1909 – 27 December 1994), better known as Fanny Cradock, was an English restaurant critic, television cook and writer. She frequently appeared on television, at cookery demonstrations and in print with ...

in the 1960s; In their 1997 book ''The Prawn Cocktail Years'', Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham note that the prawn cocktail has a "direct lineage to Escoffier".

In Britain

Nigel Slater says "it is all in the sauce", and that "the true sauce is principally mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and a couple of shakes of

Tabasco Tabasco, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tabasco, is one of the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into Municipalities of Tabasco, 17 municipalities and its capital city is Villahermosa. It i ...

." The chef Heston Blumenthal states that prawn cocktail is his "secret vice": "When I get home late after working in

The Fat Duck The Fat Duck is a fine dining restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, England, owned by the chef Heston Blumenthal. Housed in a 16th-century building, the Fat Duck opened on 16 August 1995. Although it originally served food similar to a French bi ...

there's nothing I like better than to raid the fridge for prawn cocktail." Blumenthal notes that it is best to use homemade mayonnaise, and recommends adding chopped

basil Basil (, ; , ; ''Ocimum basilicum'' (, )), also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae (mints). It is a hardiness (plants), tender plant, and is used in cuisines worldwide. In Western cuisine, the generic term "basil" r ...

and

tarragon Tarragon (''Artemisia dracunculus''), also known as estragon, is a species of perennial herbaceous plant, herb in the family Asteraceae. It is widespread in the wild across much of Eurasia and North America and is cultivated for culinary and medic ...

. The television chef and writer

Delia Smith Delia Ann Smith (born 18 June 1941) is an English cook and television presenter, known for teaching basic cookery skills in a direct style. One of the best-known celebrity chefs in British popular culture, Smith has influenced viewers to bec ...

states that the best version is with self-cooked prawns, and that in the 1960s it was "something simple but really luscious, yet over the years it has suffered from some very poor adaptations, not least watery prawns and inferior sauces." As Hopkinson and Bareham note in ''The Prawn Cocktail Years'', what was once considered to be the " Great British Meal" consisted of prawn cocktail, followed by steak garni with chips and

Black Forest gateau Black Forest gateau, ( , ) or Black Forest cake, is a layer cake made out of cocoa powder, Sour Cherry, cherries, ''Kirsch'', and whipped cream, with dark chocolate as a decoration. The origins of the cake and its name are disputed. However, th ...

for dessert; they comment that "cooked as it should be, this much-derided and often ridiculed dinner is still something very special indeed."

The "Prawn Cocktail Offensive"

Before the 1992 British general election, the Labour Party campaigned to win the support of business and financial leaders by persuading them that they would not interfere with the market economy. The campaign was lampooned as the "Prawn Cocktail Offensive".

Spin-off products

The ubiquity of the prawn cocktail has led to such products as prawn cocktail flavour

crisps Potato chips (North American English and Australian English; often just chip) or crisp (British English and Hiberno-English) are thin slices of potato (or a thin deposit of potato paste) that has been deep fried, baked, or air fried until ...

, which are still one of the most popular varieties of this snack food in the United Kingdom. Prawn cocktail flavour crisps were the second most popular in the UK in 2004, with a 16% market share.

Variations

Clams, oysters, squid (as a squid cocktail), or other seafood can be substituted for shrimp. Various preparations use ingredients such as fish and octopus. Seafood cocktails often include lime juice and a tomato based sauce and are sometimes served with lemon. In the US, they are regulated by the

FDA The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food ...

which requires the proportions by weight to be stated when the dish is sold in a prepared form.

References

External links

* {{seafood Shrimp dishes Appetizers 1960s in the United Kingdom 1970s in the United Kingdom British cuisine Oyster dishes Clam dishes American seafood dishes