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 era in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, the invention of the Prawn Cocktail is often credited to British television chef Fanny Cradock in the 1960s; however, it is more likely that Cradock popularised her version of an established dish that was not well known until then in Britain.
In their 1997 book The Prawn Cocktail Years, Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham note that the prawn cocktail has a "direct lineage to Escoffier".
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 era in the United States.
In the United Kingdom, the invention of the Prawn Cocktail is often credited to British television chef Fanny Cradock in the 1960s; however, it is more likely that Cradock popularised her version of an established dish that was not well known until then in Britain. In their 1997 book The Prawn Cocktail Years, Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham note that the prawn cocktail has a "direct lineage to Escoffier".
Prawn cocktail