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Deviled Scallops

Deviled scallops are scallops served in a butter, flour, mustard, and cayenne sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Deviled Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the scallops

  1. Clean the scallops and heat them to boiling point, then drain and reserve the liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then add the flour, salt, mustard, and cayenne.

  2. Gradually pour in the reserved liquor while stirring.

  3. When the sauce begins to thicken, add the scallops.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown bread sandwiches.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Scallop + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Scallop + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Scallops
Provide the main protein, which sits in the sauce and is the dish's centrepiece.
Butter
Forms the fat base that carries the flour and gives the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and liquor.
Reserved scallop liquor
Supplies the liquid that, stirred in, turns the roux into a sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquor gradually while stirring. Pouring the liquid in slowly and stirring keeps the flour-butter roux smooth, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against scallop, butter, flour. 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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