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Scalloped Cockles

A baked dish of cockles in a creamy sauce with anchovy, nutmeg, and cayenne, 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.

Prepare the cockles

  1. Wash the cockles well and scald them.

Make the sauce

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

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

  3. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, and chopped parsley, then stir in the cockles.

  4. Cook everything together for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill scallop shells with the mixture, cover with fried bread crumbs.

  2. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

  3. 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 shellfish flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquor and cream into a stable, spoonable sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the sauce as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat and can scramble if the sauce is boiling or too hot. Stir them in off the heat or over low heat, keeping the sauce just warm, so it stays smooth and 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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