# Bloody Mary Mix...what's in the paste?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bloody-mary-mix-whats-in-the-paste/551087>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 22, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bloody-mary-mix-whats-in-the-paste/551087 "2010-08-22T19:48:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 6

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**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2010, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bloody-mary-mix-whats-in-the-paste/551087/6 "2010-08-24T01:15:56Z")

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When restaurants use powdered and bottled mixes for drinks it’s because they’re quick and easy, not because they’re good. The paste described by the OP may have been the restaurant’s _own_ base, made from fresh ingredients earlier in the day, not the kind of stuff sold in supermarkets. You can certainly do better than those for yourself at home.

I usually use tomato juice (not V8), fresh-squeezed lemon juice, fresh-ground black pepper, whole celery seed, Worcestershire, arbol and pequin pepper sauce. It helps to use a real shaker and strainer.

My last experiments concluded with,

> [@What's for dinner tonight?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-for-dinner-tonight/549412/68):
>
> An enormous Bloody Mary with, essentially, skewers of antipasto in it: Greek and Spanish olives, pickled red pepper, marinated mushrooms and artichoke hearts, rolled sopressata and provolone. And a celery rib.

And a squeeze of lime over the top of the full assembly.

The provolone was unnecessary and didn’t add much, but the rest of it was _really_ great. I didn’t use horseradish that time, but if I can pick up a fresh root I’ll grate some next time.

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