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Au Gratin, or As Scallops

Mutton minced and seasoned, placed in scallop shells, topped with mashed potato mixture, then browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Au Gratin, or As Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold leg of mutton, removing skin and fat.

  2. Season lightly with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the minced meat into scallop shells, filling them halfway.

Top and brown

  1. Mix mashed potatoes with a little milk and a small amount of butter.

  2. Smooth the potato mixture over the meat in the shells.

  3. Brown in a Dutch oven until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold leg of mutton
Provides the main meat filling, giving savoury flavour and body to the scallop.
Mashed potatoes
Forms a soft topping that covers the meat and helps it stay moist during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness in the potato topping and helps it take on golden browning.
Milk
Loosens the mashed potatoes so they spread smoothly over the meat.

The step that matters

Brown in a Dutch oven until golden. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness. If the topping is too wet or the heat too low, it steams rather than browns, leaving a pale, soft crust.

“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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