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Oysters, Scalloped

A baked oyster dish with milk, butter, flour, anchovy sauce, nutmeg, and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oysters, Scalloped

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Open the oysters and save the liquor.

  2. Scald the oysters in their liquor, adding enough milk to cover them.

  3. Strain the oysters and thicken the liquid with butter and flour.

Season and fill

  1. Add black pepper, anchovy sauce, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  2. Place equal quantities of the mixture and oysters in scallop shells.

Top and bake

  1. Top with bread crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  2. Sprinkle golden bread-raspings over the top and bake in the oven until hot.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the soft, briny filling of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the oysters are scalded in and thickened from.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds richness to the crumb topping as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that binds the filling together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven over the filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the liquid with butter and flour. Cooking flour with butter first, then stirring in liquid, lets the starch swell evenly. Without this, the sauce can turn lumpy or stay thin.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, milk, butter, flour, pepper, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, milk, butter, flour, pepper, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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