The Popular Shellfish Choice Before Shrimp Cocktail

A shrimp cocktail consists of a delicate ring of shrimp around the brim of a martini glass filled with sauce. Before the dish became common, though, it used fresh oysters instead.

Oysters were rather trendy back in the late 1800s, and a story arises around this time of someone having created a "drink" involving shucked oysters and a proto-cocktail sauce.

It didn't take long for lemon to get into the mix, since it's such a great addition to oysters — and before you know it, the oyster cocktail began to gain steam.

The oyster boom eventually died out as a declining population led to a rise in oyster prices. This coincided with shrimp becoming more popular, leading to the shrimp cocktail.