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Devilled Scallops

A baked scallop dish topped with a creamy, spiced sauce and buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Devilled Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the scallops

  1. Pour boiling water over the scallops and let them stand for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain the scallops and cut them into quarters.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Blend in the flour, salt, and cayenne until smooth.

  3. Add the lemon juice and cream and stir until it boils.

  4. Let it boil for 3 minutes, then remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and prepared scallops.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into buttered shells or ramekins.

  2. Cover with buttered crumbs.

  3. Bake until brown.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Scallops
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when heated gently in the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream sauce and enrich it as they set with heat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and browns the crumbs on top.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the body of the sauce with the flour.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks scramble if the sauce is too hot when they go in, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, custard-like thickening. Remove the pan from heat first and stir steadily.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (scallop, flour, butter, cream, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against scallop, flour, butter, cream, egg. 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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