Name: Scallops, Stewed
Ingredients: 12 scallops; 1 oz. butter; 1 oz. flour; lemon juice or vinegar; salt; pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scallops, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Open the shells like an oyster, remove the scallops, trimming off the black parts.
Wash the scallops in 2 or 3 waters, then boil them gently in warm water for 50 to 60 minutes.

Finish and serve

Knead the flour and butter together, mixing in a little salt and pepper.
Separate the mixture into small pieces and add them to the stew 20 minutes before serving.
Place the scallops on a hot dish and drizzle with lemon juice or vinegar.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Scallop + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together160 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Butter and flour 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 stew, becoming tender with gentle simmering.
Flour: Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when mixed with butter.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavor, and helps bind the flour into the sauce.

“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.