In 1936, The Mail, Adelaide, published a recipe for seafood cocktail as a suggestion for a beach party. It’s unclear when the first seafood cocktail was consumed in Australia but, according to legend, its origins go back to the Californian goldfields in the mid-19th century. In the 1930s, the dish popped up on Australian menus and was associated with Hollywood glamour.

The seafood cocktail was preceded by the oyster cocktail. In the 19th century, in both Australia and the USA, oysters were a working man’s dish. They were commonly available at Oyster Saloons at a low cost. Late in the century, such an establishment in Australia might offer a dozen oysters for sixpence ‘with bread included’, although patrons might have to find another two pence if they also required butter.

According to legend, the oyster cocktail was invented by a California miner who would order oysters with vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, ketchup, and horseradish. We find references to oyster cocktails as early as 1868 in the San Francisco Chronicle and, by the 1890s the Americans had expanded the concept to include oyster, clam, lobster, crab and shrimp cocktails.

In Australia, the oyster cocktail seems to have first appeared as a drink. In 1890, the Evening News in Sydney published the following recipe:

Take a cocktail glass of oyster juice, and after putting in a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, add a little vinegar, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

Two years later, an article in the Brisbane Telegraph claimed this to be the “latest American drink”, although in this version the drink contained the oysters themselves, along with lime juice rather than vinegar. The drink (perhaps what we would now call an oyster shooter) was subsequently said to be all the rage at the Manhattan Club in New York and dubbed the “latest Yankee craze”. By 1900, oyster cocktail vendors were plying their trade at race meetings in Sydney.

The first Australian oyster cocktail recipe to resemble the seafood cocktail we know, in that it contained tomato “catsup”, seems to have appeared in 1901. In 1908, an even closer cousin emerges: the lobster cocktail. Described as “an appetiser for the beginning of dinner”, it reads:

One tablespoonful of horse radish, one of vinegar, one of Worcestershire sauce, two of lemon juice, one of tomato sauce, one half a teaspoonful of Tabasco sauce, one half of salt; mix well, put on ice for an hour; to this add the shredded meat of lobster till the quantity needed is reached. Serve in little glasses, surrounded by chopped ice if liked.

Closer still is the 1928 recipe for shrimp cocktail. It includes Russian dressing, a combination of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup with horseradish, pimento, chives and other spices. Despite its name, the dressing was invented by an American and sounds remarkably like the pink sauce (called Marie Rose sauce) that graces our traditional seafood cocktail.

A prawn cocktail recipe in 1928 and the 1936 recipe for seafood cocktail do not have mayonnaise. The latter suggested the dish as “another bright idea” for a day at the beach. It mixed lobster, crabmeat and prawns with a sauce made from a small glass of dry sherry, two dashes of Tobasco sauce. a teaspoon of lemon juice, two tablespoons of tomato sauce, a teaspoon of Worcester sauce, and half a teaspoon of chopped chives. “Mix well and stand on ice or carry in an iced vacuum flask until ready to serve,” the instructions read.