Name: Escalloped Oysters
Ingredients: 1 pint oysters; ½ cup milk; 8 whole milk crackers; 4 tablespoons sweet butter; additional rolled crackers (if needed)

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Escalloped Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble and bake

In a baking dish, layer whole milk crackers spread with 2 tablespoons of butter.
Add a layer of oysters, followed by another layer of buttered crackers, and then another layer of oysters.
Pour in the milk over the layers.
If there's leftover liquid, mix it with enough rolled crackers and 1 tablespoon of melted butter to form a paste, then spread it on top.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the milk is boiling and the top is brown.
Serve directly from the baking dish.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,933 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters: Provide the main flavour and texture, releasing their briny liquid as they cook in the dish.
Milk: Forms the moist sauce that surrounds the layers and bubbles up as the dish bakes.
Milk crackers: Soak up the liquid and soften into a tender, layered base between the oysters.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the crackers and top brown in the oven.

“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.