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Scallops of Fowl Au Bechamel

Chicken scallops sautéed in clarified butter and topped with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Scallops of Fowl Au Bechamel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flesh from the fowls, taking it as intact as possible from the breast.

  2. Strip off the skin and slice the fillets into small, thin scallops.

  3. Dip each scallop into clarified butter and arrange them in a clean frying pan.

  4. Sprinkle fine salt over the scallops.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the scallops quickly without browning, about 3 to 4 minutes.

  2. Drain the scallops from the butter and pile them in the center of a hot dish.

  3. Sauce the scallops with boiling béchamel before serving.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Flesh from 2 fowls
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the protein that is sliced into scallops.
Clarified butter
Carries heat evenly during quick frying and adds richness without the milk solids that would brown.
Bechamel sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that softens the cooked scallops when served.

The step that matters

Fry the scallops quickly without browning. Thin scallops cook through in minutes and toughen or dry out if overcooked. Clarified butter lets the pan run hot without burning, so keeping the heat brief and gentle preserves tenderness.

“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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