Skip to main content
Main

To Scallop Oysters

A dish of oysters simmered with mushrooms, parsley, shallots, and gravy, then baked with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Scallop Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and detach them from their shells.

  2. Gently boil the oysters in their liquor.

  3. Drain the oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine butter, mushrooms, parsley, and shallots in a saucepan and let them stew together.

  2. Add flour and dilute the mixture with gravy.

  3. Stew and reduce the sauce.

  4. Add the oysters to the sauce.

Fill and brown

  1. Reserve a dozen of the largest shells and wash them.

  2. Place 4 oysters and some sauce in each shell.

  3. Cover with bread crumbs and add a little butter on top.

  4. Brown in a very hot Dutch oven or with a red-hot shovel.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish and provide its briny, savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the oysters rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the sauce and the browned topping.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury depth and moisture to the sauce.
Shallots
Contribute a mild aromatic sweetness as they soften in the butter.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns under high heat.

The step that matters

Brown in a very hot Dutch oven or with a red-hot shovel. Browning needs intense, direct heat so the bread crumbs and butter crisp and colour quickly. Too little heat steams the topping and leaves the oysters overcooked before the surface browns.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, mushroom, shallot, flour, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, mushroom, shallot, flour, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes