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Scalloped Oyster Plant

A dish of boiled oyster plant served with butter, pepper, salt, milk, and bread crumbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Oyster Plant

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the oyster plant until perfectly tender.

  2. Remove the oyster plant from the water.

  3. Rub the oyster plant through a colander.

Mix and bake

  1. Add butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and milk to the oyster plant and mix the oyster plant well.

  2. Transfer the oyster plant to a baking dish.

  3. Cover the top with bread crumbs and small bits of butter.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oyster plant
Forms the soft, pureed body of the dish, providing most of its texture and bulk.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the crumb topping in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the puree into a creamy, scoopable texture.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden top layer through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Rub the oyster plant through a colander. Pushing the cooked vegetable through a colander breaks down its fibres and removes lumps, giving a smooth texture. Skipping this leaves the dish stringy and uneven.

“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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