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Scolloped Oysters

Scalloped oysters are baked oysters topped with bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, and oyster liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scolloped Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the oysters

  1. Place the oysters and their liquor in a small saucepan and heat until it boils to blanch the oysters.

  2. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  3. Strain the liquor into a basin.

  4. Place the oysters on a plate.

  5. Remove the gills and hard parts from the oysters.

  6. Rub stale bread through a wire sieve to make crumbs.

Assemble in shells

  1. Grease four scallop shells with butter.

  2. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of bread crumbs into each shell.

  3. Add six oysters to each shell.

  4. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of bread crumbs over the oysters.

  5. Add 3 or 4 small bits of butter.

  6. Mix salt and pepper and sprinkle the mixture over the oysters.

  7. Pour in the oyster liquor.

  8. Top with a smooth layer of bread crumbs and add a few bits of butter on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes until pale brown.

  2. Serve on a hot dish lined with a folded napkin.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Oysters
Form the main body of the dish and cook gently into a tender filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the oyster liquor and form a light crust that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb topping brown.

The step that matters

Blanching the oysters. Heating only until the liquor just boils firms the oysters and loosens their edges without toughening them. Boiling them for long makes the oysters rubbery and shrinks them.

“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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