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Applebee's Cocktail

High histamine

This cocktail sauce is high in histamine, mainly from the tomato paste and lemon juice concentrate.

Most of this is cooked to order, which is the best case for histamine. Even so, a restaurant kitchen preps ahead and holds things warm through a service, so freshness varies more than it would at home. The rating above comes from the chain's published ingredients. If a dish is borderline for you, asking how it is prepared tells you more than the menu does.

This is a classic cocktail sauce built on tomato paste, vinegar, horseradish, and lemon.

  • Tomato paste and lemon juice concentrate — both are classic histamine liberators, and they are the backbone of this sauce, which is what pushes it high.

  • Horseradish and soybean oil — these sit at a moderate level, so even without the tomato and lemon the sauce would not land clean.

A plain, unsauced version of your dish is a much lower-histamine way to go here.

This rating comes from Applebee's own published ingredient statement, read on August 11, 2026. Restaurant recipes vary by location and change over time, so always check the current listing: source 1, source 2. How we rate foods →

Applebee's Cocktail and Applebee's are trademarks of their respective owners. This page is an independent histamine reference and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the brand.

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References

  1. SIGHI Food Compatibility List — SIGHI (2026)
  2. Histamine and histamine intolerance — Maintz & Novak (2007)
  3. Histamine Intolerance: The Current State of the Art — Comas-Basté et al. (2020)
  4. Low-Histamine Diets: Is the Exclusion of Foods Justified by Their Histamine Content? — Sánchez-Pérez et al. (2021)
  5. Histamine Intolerance: Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Beyond — Jochum (2024)
  6. Guideline on management of suspected adverse reactions to ingested histamine — Reese et al. (2021)