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Scalloped Oysters

Scalloped oysters are oysters baked in a white sauce with cayenne, lemon, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Scalloped Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open and remove gills from the oysters, then strain and rinse them in their liquor.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, make a thick white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually stirring in milk.

  2. Stir the oyster liquor into the sauce, then add cayenne and lemon juice.

  3. Add the oysters to the mixture and warm gently for 4-5 minutes without boiling.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture into scallop shells, cover with bread crumbs, and pour clarified butter over the top.

  2. Brown under a salamander.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and texture, becoming tender when gently warmed rather than boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, as clarified butter, helps the crumb topping brown richly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable white sauce that holds the oysters together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns under the heat.

The step that matters

Warm the oysters gently without boiling. Oysters toughen and shrink when overheated, so they should only warm through in the sauce. Boiling makes them rubbery and can cause the sauce to break or separate.

“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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