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The regional table / Nevada

Las Vegas Shrimp Cocktail

Published September 23, 2026 · Nevada

A tall stemmed glass packed with pink poached shrimp hooked over the rim, red sauce beneath them and a lemon wedge on the side
The shrimp hang on the rim and the sauce sits under them. Stirring the two together is a different dish. AI-generated illustration.
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Nevada was eating shrimp cocktail thirty years before the casinos worked out how to give it away.

The Las Vegas shrimp cocktail is told as a casino story: a loss leader sold below cost, in a tulip glass, at a price that did not move for decades. The dish itself is older than that and older than the Strip, and Nevada's own press proves it. The Ely Daily Times of Friday 13 April 1928 printed a recipe on page three, in a column of household cookery, which reads — through some rough optical character recognition — that fresh shrimps are much to be preferred to the canned variety, but the latter are most satisfying; then it says to place a tablespoonful of chili sauce, a dash of catsup, a drop of Tabasco and "fresh horseradish in a cocktail glass with salt and a dash of pepper". That is this sauce, in a Nevada newspaper, in 1928. Nine months later, on Tuesday 15 January 1929, the same paper carried the White Pine Business Men's Club dinner menu on page four, and the first line under the heading is Shrimp Cocktail, ahead of the lettuce salad, the cream of chicken soup and the T-bone steak.

The casino claim itself could not be tested from here, and it should not be repeated as though it had been. The story usually names a downtown house and the year 1959. Nevada has no open newspaper portal of its own — the state's digitisation feeds Chronicling America, which refuses automated requests — and the only Nevada instance on the Advantage community-newspaper network is White Pine County's, whose text run for this phrase stops in 1942. Searches of the Georgia and Nebraska archives, both of which index syndicated material from across the country, turn up nothing that puts the dish in a Las Vegas casino, and the federal record on govinfo carries no such thing either. So this page names no founder and no year for the fifty-cent cocktail. What it can tell you is that the dish was already on Nevada tables in the 1920s, and what the federal rules say about the shrimp you will buy for it.

Why this version works

The ice bath is not optional. Carry-over cooking will take a drained shrimp several degrees further while it sits, and that is the difference between tender and squeaky. Straight from the pot into ice water, two minutes, then dry them.

Make the sauce first and let it sit. Horseradish heat is volatile and it needs twenty minutes in the fridge to spread through the ketchup. Sauce mixed at the last second tastes of two separate things in one bowl.

Poach in seasoned water, off the boil. Bring the pot to a boil, then kill the heat before the shrimp go in. Shrimp are done at about 120°F and a rolling boil drives straight past that into rubber. Four minutes in water that is hot and still, no more, and pull them the moment they curl into a loose C.

Horseradish carries the sauce, sugar does not. Bottled cocktail sauce is mostly sweetened ketchup. Cutting the ketchup with chili sauce, loading it with fresh horseradish and sharpening it with lemon gives you heat that arrives in the nose and leaves, which is what makes a second shrimp worth eating.

Ingredient notes

Lemon: a whole one, half into the sauce and half in wedges. Bottled juice tastes flat against horseradish and there is nothing else in this dish to hide behind.

Shrimp: a pound and a half of large shrimp, shell on, 21 to 25 to the pound. Buy them frozen unless you live on the coast: nearly all "fresh" shrimp on a counter has been thawed, and you have no idea when. Thaw under cold running water for ten minutes.

Chili sauce: half a cup of the American-style bottled chili sauce, which is a thin tomato relish rather than anything hot. It is what the 1928 column calls for and it is less sweet than ketchup, which is why the two together beat either alone.

Horseradish: a quarter cup of prepared horseradish, drained of its liquid, or the same volume freshly grated. Grate it cold and use it within the hour — the heat is enzymatic and it walks off fast once the root is open.

Step by step

  1. Mix the sauce. Stir together the ketchup, chili sauce, horseradish, the juice of half the lemon, the Worcestershire and the hot sauce. Season with a pinch of salt and refrigerate at least 20 minutes.
  2. Set the pot and the bath. Bring the water to a boil with the salt, the bay, the peppercorns and the halved lemon. Meanwhile fill a large bowl with ice and water.
  3. Poach off the heat. Turn the heat off, wait 10 seconds for the water to go still, and slide in the shrimp. Leave 3 to 4 minutes, until they are pink and curled into an open C rather than a tight O.
    Pink shrimp gently poaching in still water with lemon and bay
    Poach off the heat until the shrimp curl into an open C. AI-generated illustration.
  4. Shock and dry. Lift them straight into the ice bath with a slotted spoon. After 2 minutes, drain and pat them completely dry.
  5. Peel and chill. Peel, leaving the tail fin on, and pull the dark vein from the back with the point of a knife. Refrigerate 10 minutes, uncovered, so the surface dries and the sauce clings.
  6. Build the glasses. Spoon sauce into the bottom of 6 stemmed glasses, hook the shrimp over the rims and pile the rest in. Lemon wedge on the side, and serve cold.
If the shrimp came out tight and squeaky they went into boiling water rather than still water, and they will not come back — chop them, fold them into the sauce with diced celery and serve it as a dip, which hides the texture entirely. If the sauce tastes flat and sweet, it needs more horseradish and more lemon, in that order, and a further ten minutes in the fridge before you judge it again.

Storage and make-ahead

Poached shrimp keep 2 days in the fridge in a covered box, and they are better on the day. Do not freeze them a second time; the texture goes to cotton.

The sauce keeps a week refrigerated but loses its bite after two or three days as the horseradish fades. Stir in a fresh spoonful before serving it again.

What to serve with it

Saltine crackers and cold beer, which is what the glass was designed to be eaten beside.

If it is a first course rather than a bar snack, follow it with something plain and hot — a plate of steak and potatoes will not fight it.

A tall stemmed glass packed with pink poached shrimp hooked over the rim, red sauce beneath them and a lemon wedge on the side

From the recipe box / Nevada

Las Vegas Shrimp Cocktail

Shrimp poached four minutes in a seasoned pot, shocked cold, and packed into a stemmed glass over a sauce built on horseradish rather than sugar.

Prep
20 min
Cook
5 min
Total
25 min
Serves
6
Calories
156 per serving

Ingredients

Scale

Instructions

  1. Stir the ketchup, chili sauce, horseradish, juice of half the lemon, Worcestershire and hot sauce together and chill 20 minutes.
  2. Boil the water with the salt, bay, peppercorns and the halved lemon. Set up a bowl of ice water.
  3. Turn off the heat, let the water go still, and poach the shrimp 3–4 minutes until pink and loosely curled.
  4. Lift them into the ice bath for 2 minutes, then drain and dry thoroughly.
  5. Peel, leaving the tails on, devein, and chill uncovered 10 minutes.
  6. Spoon sauce into 6 stemmed glasses, hang the shrimp on the rims, and serve with lemon wedges.

Nutrition

Fat2 g (0 g saturated)
Sodium780 mg
Protein23 g
Servingabout 5 shrimp with sauce
Calories156
Cholesterol214 mg
Carbohydrates12 g (9 g sugar, 1 g fiber)

Nutrition is an estimate calculated from the listed ingredients and is provided as a courtesy, not as dietary advice.

Questions readers ask

Can I make it ahead for a party?

Yes, and it is better for it. Poach, shock and peel the shrimp the morning of, and keep them dry and uncovered in the fridge so the surface tightens. Make the sauce the same day, no earlier — horseradish loses its edge within about three days of being mixed into anything wet.

What size shrimp counts as large?

There is a federal answer and it is stricter than the fish counter. Table I of 21 CFR 161.173, the standard for canned wet pack shrimp, sizes them by count rather than by adjective: extra large or jumbo is fewer than 3.5 shrimp per ounce of drained product, large is 3.5 to 5.0 inclusive, medium is more than 5.0 but not more than 9.0, and small is more than 9.0 but not more than 17.0. The same section rules that the word "prawns" may appear on a label in parentheses after "shrimp" only if the shrimp are of large or extra large size.

Who started the cheap Las Vegas shrimp cocktail?

Nobody this article could verify. The usual account names a downtown casino and the year 1959, and no document reachable from here supports or refutes it: Nevada digitises its newspapers into Chronicling America, which blocks scripts; the only Nevada town on the Advantage archive network is Ely, whose run for this phrase ends in 1942; and the federal record holds nothing. What is dated is earlier and elsewhere in the state — the Ely Daily Times printed the sauce in April 1928 and put the dish at the head of a club dinner menu in January 1929.

Is there a federal standard for the cocktail itself?

No, and the absence is worth knowing. The word cocktail does not appear anywhere in 21 CFR 161.173, the only standard of identity the shrimp itself has. Federal law will tell you how many shrimp make a pound and whether you may call them prawns; it has nothing at all to say about what you pour over them.