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Scalloped Roes

A baked dish of shad roe mixed with butter, egg yolks, anchovy paste, and seasonings, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Scalloped Roes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Boil the roes in water with a little vinegar added.

  2. Soak the roes in cold water for 5 minutes.

  3. Wipe the roes dry.

  4. Break up the roes with the back of a spoon, being careful not to crush the eggs.

Make the mixture

  1. Pound the boiled yolks to a powder.

  2. Mix the powdered yolks into the drawn butter.

  3. Add parsley and seasonings.

  4. Fold the roes into the mixture.

Bake and brown

  1. Strew the bottom of a bake dish with bread crumbs.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  3. Cover the mixture with more breadcrumbs.

  4. Dot the top with butter.

  5. Bake the dish covered until it begins to bubble.

  6. Uncover the dish and brown on the top rack of the oven.

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. Roe + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Roes of shad
Form the main body of the dish, setting into a soft, delicate texture when baked.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, binding the yolks and roe while carrying flavor.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Pounded smooth, they thicken the mixture and add a creamy, rich body.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp top layer that absorbs butter and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Break up the roes without crushing the eggs. Roe is made of delicate egg sacs. Crushing them releases fluid and breaks the texture, so the mixture turns mushy instead of tender and separated.

“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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