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Scallops

A curry-flavoured scallop dish simmered with onions, apple, prunes, chutney, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the scallops

  1. Simmer the scallops in 1½ pints of water for 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the scallops and place them on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the onions in clarified dripping until browned.

  2. Add the fried onions to the water used for boiling the scallops.

  3. Stir in the sliced apple, prunes, chutney, curry powder, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer the mixture for 30 minutes.

  5. Rub the mixture through a sieve with a wooden spoon to thicken slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. Gently simmer the scallops in the sauce for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with boiled rice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Scallop + oniontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Scallop + peppertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Scallops
Provide the main seafood protein, which firms and turns opaque when simmered.
Onions
Browning in the fat builds sweetness and savoury depth that underpins the sauce.
Apple
Adds natural sweetness and body as it breaks down during simmering.
Prunes
Add dark sweetness and thickening body to the sauce.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and warm flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Pushing the cooked solids through a sieve gives the sauce a smooth, slightly thickened texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the sauce grainy and thin, since the fruit and onion pulp is what carries the body.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (scallop, onion, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against scallop, onion, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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