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Ham Scallops

Thin slices of ham sautéed in butter and served with a lemon‑parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Ham Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ham

  1. Cut the ham into scallops, each ¼ inch thick, 3 inches long, and 2 inches wide.

Cook the scallops

  1. Fry the scallops in hot butter until lightly browned on each side.

  2. Drain the scallops from the fat and place them on a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped parsley, fresh butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture gently, stirring until it thickens to a custard-like consistency.

  3. Pour the sauce over the scallops and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham
Forms the main body of the dish, cut into thick scallops that hold their shape while frying.
Fresh butter
Frying fat that browns the ham surfaces and, once melted into the sauce, adds richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce gently. Butter sauces thicken from gentle heat. Too much heat can split the butter and fat separate, so the sauce turns greasy instead of custard-like.

“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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