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Scallops, Scalloped

Scallops baked in shells with lemon, butter, breadcrumbs, parsley, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Scallops, Scalloped

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the scallops

  1. Open the scallops and remove them from their shells, trimming away the black parts.

  2. Rinse the scallops in water with lemon juice, then drain and dry them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter the insides of the deep shells and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Mix the scallops with bread crumbs, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and melted butter or white sauce.

  3. Fill the prepared shells with the mixture and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until light brown on top.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Scallops
Form the main body of the dish, cooking through in the baked filling.
Bread crumbs
Add texture and absorb moisture, and help the top turn light brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb topping brown.
White sauce
Binds the filling and keeps the scallops moist as they bake.

The step that matters

Drying the scallops after rinsing. Excess surface water dilutes the filling and steams the scallops instead of letting the topping brown, so they should be patted dry before mixing.

“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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