The sauce is often credited to
Fanny Cradock, who made it widely known. Variations exist internationally, and seafood cocktail sauces predate Cradock's 1967 recipe by some years. For example, in 1956,
Constance Spry published a recipe for Tomato Ice, a chilled mixture of mayonnaise and sweetened tomato pulp, for use as the base of a prawn cocktail. The American
cocktail sauce is a horseradish and ketchup-based sauce that is served with seafood, and dates back considerably earlier. Although this is not the same sauce as Marie Rose, it is served in the same distinctive style in a prawn or shrimp cocktail, and it has been incorrectly suggested that US cocktail sauce, made milder for British tastes, was the precursor of Marie Rose sauce. The connection with the name Marie Rose is also not clear. Cradock is sometimes credited with coining the name, and there is a popular legend that the sauce was named after the
Tudor navy warship
Mary Rose. However, the
Mary Rose Trust itself has debunked this, saying "As we still have a number of divers on our team who were around during this period, so we can ask them. Not one of them has any recollection of this happening... since the Mary Rose was in the news a lot during this period, it becomes clear that some people did the sums and came up with a nice story to justify the result." ==Similar sauces==