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Scalloped Cockles

A baked dish of cockles in a creamy sauce with butter, flour, anchovy, spices, egg yolks, lemon juice, parsley, topped with fried bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Cockles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. Wash the cockles well and scald them.

  2. Strain the liquor into a saucepan and add butter, flour, cream, anchovy, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  3. Stir the sauce over heat until it boils and reduces for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  5. Mix in the cockles.

  6. Stir everything over heat for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill scallop shells with the mixture.

  2. Cover the shells with fried bread crumbs.

  3. Place the shells on a baking sheet.

  4. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  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

Cockles
Provide the main seafood flavour and bulk of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable sauce that holds the filling together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the sauce as it heats.
Cream
Adds moisture and smoothness to the sauce.
Fried bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce gets too hot after they are added. Keep the heat gentle and keep stirring so the sauce thickens smoothly and stays creamy.

“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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