Talk:Prawn cocktail

Popularity of prawn cocktail crisps
If anyone wants to work their popularity back into the article, the Daily Record published an article back in 2004 where they were listed as the second most popular flavour in the UK (after salt and vinegar). It's archived online (pay per view, unfortunately) here:. I would do it myself but I'm in a bit of a hurry and I'm rubbish with cite templates anyway. :) Dreaded Walrus t c 14:48, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Degrees of irony
The lead says 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." It's my understanding that people with anemia will often add additional irony as a dietary supplement. I think that should be recognized in the article. EEng (talk) 05:26, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Please provide a reliable sauce. Philafrenzy (talk) 10:00, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
 * To achieve the right degree of scrap irony, one needs to serve it with dry ice. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:19, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Shrimp cocktail
In America there is no "prawn cocktail" (as far as I know; I'm prepared to be corrected as I can't speak for the whole country) and there is no common "Marie Rose sauce". Instead, we have "shrimp cocktail" with "cocktail sauce", which is not a modified Marie Rose sauce, but is a concoction of ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, and possibly Worcestershire sauce. I used to prepare it at home in the 1950s; memory of the details is not complete, but the sauce has little in common with Marie Rose sauce and appears to precede it. I added "British" to "seafood dish" because (as far as I know) the prawn cocktail described is not the common American dish.

Furthermore, the mysterious (as it seems from the article's "not well known until then in Britain") origin of "prawn cocktail" is simply explained if we guess (it is a guess) that it came from the U.S. As I said, we had it and it was common before its asserted popularity in Britain in 1960. Priority for the U.S. seems likely but of course documentation is needed to resolve the question.

I propose a separate article for "shrimp cocktail" or moving the whole thing to "Shrimp cocktail" on the grounds that it appears to have been popular in the U.S. before it was in Britain, and that the British prawn cocktail is not the American shrimp cocktail. Zaslav (talk) 04:18, 29 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I removed reference to the dish being "British," since other than the difference of the name, it doesn't appear this dish differs much from the US version in concept, and neither may have claim to originality, though the evidence does seem to point to it being found in the US prior to Britain. I'd rather it not be able to be claimed by any country than give false attribution.


 * Nevertheless, the description with "Marie Rose sauce" is that of a British dish (apparently) and not of the American shrimp cocktail. This should be fixed.  Zaslav (talk) 13:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Lettuce is of the essence of the British prawn cocktail, but seems irrelevant to the American shrimp cocktail. The British uses Marie Rose sauce, essentially equal parts of tomato ketchup and mayonnaise, whereas American cocktail sauce has no mayonnaise but does have horseradish. (See Nigel Slater's recipe here http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/16/nigel-slater-classic-recipe-prawn-cocktail for the British version). There are similarities (prawns and ketchup) but significant differences (lettuce, and mayonnaise, without any horseradish): they do seem to be two different dishes. Simon C.