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Scallops, Stewed

Stewed scallops simmered with butter, flour, and seasonings, finished with lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Scallops, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the scallops

  1. Open the scallops' shells and remove the scallops, trimming away the beard and black parts.

  2. Wash the scallops well in 2 or 3 waters.

Stew and finish

  1. Cover the scallops with warm water and boil gently for 50 to 60 minutes.

  2. Knead the flour and butter together, mixing in a little salt and pepper.

  3. Separate the mixture into small pieces.

  4. Add the small pieces to the stew pan 20 minutes before serving.

  5. Place the scallops on a hot dish.

  6. Season the sauce to taste.

  7. Add lemon juice or vinegar.

  8. Pour the sauce over the scallops.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Scallops
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender during gentle simmering.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Kneaded with butter, it thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter pieces 20 minutes before serving. Flour thickens liquid only when heated enough, and adding the butter-flour pieces too early or too late changes the sauce's thickness. Timing them near the end lets the sauce thicken without lumping or thinning.

“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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