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Scalloped Oysters

Scalloped oysters are baked in a creamy sauce with butter, flour, milk, and cream, topped with browned crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scalloped Oysters

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 oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce with butter, flour, milk, and cream.

  2. Add oysters, salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice to the sauce.

Fill and bake

  1. Prepare buttered scallop shells or ramekin cases.

  2. Place the mixture in the shells and sprinkle with browned crumbs.

  3. Heat through in the oven at 350°F (175°C), but do not cook the oysters.

  4. Garnish with watercress.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and the tender, briny filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the smooth sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a sauce that holds the oysters.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Heat through without overcooking the oysters. Oysters turn firm and rubbery when overheated. Warming the filling only until hot keeps them tender and juicy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, cream, butter, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, cream, butter, pepper, flour, milk. 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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