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Scalloped Vegetable Oysters

A baked dish of sliced vegetable oysters layered with crumbs and covered in a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scalloped Vegetable Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the oysters

  1. Boil the sliced vegetable oysters in water until very tender.

  2. Skim out the oysters.

Layer and make the sauce

  1. Layer the oysters in a pudding dish with alternating layers of crumbs and oysters, finishing with a layer of crumbs on top.

  2. In the boiling water, add thin cream and salt.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour rubbed smooth in a little cold cream.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the cream mixture over the layered oysters and crumbs.

  2. If the mixture does not cover well, add more cream or milk.

  3. Bake for 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. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Vegetable oysters
Form the main body of the dish and supply its distinctive flavor.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the sauce that soaks into the layers.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce that holds the dish together.
Bread crumbs
Form the layers that absorb the sauce and give the dish structure and body.

The step that matters

Rub the flour smooth in cold cream before thickening. Flour dispersed in cold liquid first hydrates evenly. Added dry or to hot liquid, it clumps, and the starch must then boil to thicken the sauce fully.

“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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