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Fried Scallops

Fried scallops coated in cracker crumbs and fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Scallop and pepper work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 154 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Fried Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the scallops

  1. Pour boiling water over the scallops and let them stand for 2 minutes, then drain thoroughly.

  2. Place the scallops between two towels and dry them.

  3. In a bowl, season the cracker crumbs with salt and pepper.

Coat the scallops

  1. Dip the scallops in the seasoned crumbs.

  2. Dip the scallops in a mixture of beaten egg and water.

  3. Dip the scallops again in the crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a frying basket with the scallops without heaping them.

  2. Fry in deep hot oil until brown.

  3. Serve immediately with tartar sauce if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Scallop + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Main protein that cooks through and browns on the outside while staying tender inside.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the scallops during frying.
Egg
Binds the crumbs to the scallops so the coating adheres during frying.

The step that matters

Drying the scallops. Surface moisture turns to steam in hot oil and can loosen the crumb coating, so the scallops should be patted dry before breading. Crowding the basket also drops oil temperature, which leads to greasy rather than crisp results.

“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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