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Scalloped Oysters

Scalloped oysters are oysters cooked in scallop shells with water and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Scalloped Oysters

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the beards and white portion from the oysters.

  2. Simmer the oysters with 1 teaspoon of water for every dozen for 2 to 3 minutes, and do not overcook them to avoid bitterness.

  3. Grease the scallop shells with butter.

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

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

  2. Oyster + scalloptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Scallop + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
The main ingredient, cooked briefly so it stays tender rather than turning bitter.

The step that matters

Simmer the oysters briefly. Overcooking oysters makes them tough and bitter, so they should be simmered only for the short time given and removed as soon as they are done.

“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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