Name: Cheese Scallops
Ingredients: ¼ pound white bread crumbs; ½ cup milk; 2 eggs; ¼ pound grated cheese; 1 tablespoon butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

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 ↓

Cheese Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

Soak the bread crumbs in milk.
Beat the eggs and mix with the soaked bread crumbs.
Add the butter and grated cheese, then season with salt and pepper.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into buttered scallop shells.
Sprinkle with additional bread crumbs and grated cheese.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown, then serve.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Soak up milk and bind with the eggs to give the filling body.
Eggs: Set when baked, holding the filling together in a custard-like structure.
Grated cheese: Melts and browns on top, adding richness and savory flavor.
Milk: Moistens the bread crumbs and keeps the filling tender as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown.

“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.