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Fish Scallop

A baked fish dish served in scallop shells with walnut ketchup, made mustard, anchovy sauce, cream, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Scallop

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.

Make the filling

  1. In a stewpan, combine the fish with walnut ketchup, made mustard, and anchovy sauce.

  2. Mix these ingredients with the cream until well combined.

  3. Heat the mixture gently, ensuring it does not boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a dish or scallop shells.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs and dot with small lumps of butter.

  3. Brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 15 minutes.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Ketchup + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the dish its main flavour and body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a soft, smooth texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumb topping brown and become golden.
Anchovy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that enhances the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently, ensuring it does not boil. Cream containing dairy proteins can curdle or separate when boiled, leaving the filling grainy instead of smooth. Gentle heat keeps the sauce creamy and evenly textured.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, ketchup, mustard, anchovy, sauce, cream, bread):

  1. Beansfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, ketchup, mustard, anchovy, sauce, cream, 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.

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