Skip to main content
Main

Scallops Oj Cold Veal or Chicken

Scallop shells filled with minced cold veal or chicken, seasoned with nutmeg, pepper, salt, cream, bread crumbs, and butter, then browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scallops Oj Cold Veal or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the meat extremely small.

  2. Heat the minced meat with a scrape of nutmeg, a little pepper, salt, and cream for a few minutes.

  3. Place the mixture into scallop shells.

Top and brown

  1. Fill the shells with bread crumbs and add bits of butter on top.

  2. Brown the shells before the fire.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal or chicken
Forms the main body of the filling once finely minced and heated.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the minced meat stays tender when heated.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, dry topping that helps the surface brown.
Butter
Adds fat that melts over the crumbs, aiding browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the shells before the fire. The filling is already cooked, so the goal is only to brown the crumb topping. Too little heat leaves it pale and dry, while too much can scorch the crumbs before the filling warms through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, cream, bread, butter):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, cream, bread, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes