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Scalloped Oysters

Scalloped oysters are baked oysters topped with white sauce, bread crumbs, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Scalloped Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Rinse the oysters in their own strained liquor and remove the gills.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the oyster liquor with the white sauce.

  2. If needed, thicken the mixture with flour mixed with butter.

  3. Add the oysters and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the oysters to scallop shells and cover with bread crumbs.

  2. Drizzle with clarified butter and brown under a salamander or in the oven.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and tender, briny texture that the sauce surrounds.
White sauce
Forms a creamy binding that moistens the oysters and keeps them from drying out.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce clings to the oysters instead of running off.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns during cooking, adding texture contrast.
Clarified butter
Promotes even browning of the crumb topping and adds rich flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer the oysters briefly. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked, so they should only heat through in the sauce for the stated 3-4 minutes before being transferred for browning.

“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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