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Scalloped Oysters Au Supreme

A baked oyster dish with butter, cracker crumbs, parsley, celery salt, capers, paprika, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Scalloped Oysters Au Supreme

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with oysters.

Assemble

  1. Sprinkle oysters with cracker crumbs, bits of butter, parsley, celery salt, capers, and paprika.

  2. Moisten with heated cream or milk thickened with white roux and allowed to cool.

  3. Add another layer of oysters, more seasoned crumbs, and cream until the dish is full.

  4. Top with crumbs thickly dotted with butter.

Bake

  1. Bake covered until it bubbles, then uncover and brown lightly for about 30 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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish and release their briny flavor as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb topping brown.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the layers body, with a crisp top when browned.
Cream or milk
Provides moisture and, with the roux, forms a smooth sauce around the oysters.
White roux
Thickens the cream so it coats the oysters rather than running off.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with roux. The roux must be fully cooked and the cream heated before it goes in, then allowed to cool slightly. Lumps or a thin sauce can result if it is added too hot or too cold, and the sauce sets the texture of the whole dish.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, butter, parsley, capers, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, butter, parsley, capers, cream. 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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