Skip to main content
Main

Fowl Scallops

Fowl scallops are minced chicken seasoned with spices, baked in scallop shells with bread crumbs and butter.

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

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 ↓

Fowl Scallops

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the meat of a cold fowl very fine and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne, and lemon peel.

  2. Heat the mixture in a little thin cream or white broth until warmed through, but do not boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into clean, buttered scallop shells.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs and place bits of butter on top.

  3. Brown the bread crumbs in a 400°F (200°C) oven for twenty 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat of a cold fowl
Forms the bulk of the filling and provides the savory, meaty body of the dish.
Thin cream or white broth
Adds moisture so the minced meat stays tender and spreads smoothly in the shells.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned topping under the oven heat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumbs brown evenly on top.

The step that matters

Do not boil the mixture. Heating the minced meat in cream or broth only until warmed through keeps it tender. Boiling toughens the proteins and can cause the liquid to separate, leaving a dry, grainy filling.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, nutmeg, cream, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, cream, bread, butter. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes