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Baked Scallops in Shells
Take desired quantity of fresh scallops-1 pint or 1 quart, and cook them in little white wine until done. Drain, cut in quarters, and add to them 1/2 their quantity of minced onion fried until tender, but not brown. Moisten with white sauce, season with red pepper and salt, heap high in scallop shells, cover with breadcrumbs moistened in melted Crisco, and brown in hot oven Garnish with lemon slices and parsley.
A straightforward gratin of poached scallops, workable as written once the vague quantities and the shortening are pinned down. The one thing to get right is the poaching: scallops are done in about two minutes.
- The hinge: don't cook them "until done"Bring the wine to a bare simmer, add the scallops, and pull them out as soon as they turn opaque at the centre — 1 to 2 minutes for bay scallops, 2 to 3 for sea scallops. They also get a second heating in the oven, so undercook slightly. Anything longer and the quarters come out squeaky.
- Scallops by volumeA pint of shucked scallops is roughly 1 lb, a quart roughly 2 lb. A pint serves three or four as a first course; a quart makes six generous shells.
- "Little white wine"Enough to come halfway up the scallops, about 1/2 cup for a pint. Save the poaching liquid and use it to thin the white sauce — it carries most of the flavour.
- White sauceA standard béchamel: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, 1 cup of milk plus the strained poaching wine, cooked until it coats a spoon. Use it thick — about 3/4 cup of sauce per pint of scallops. Too much and the shells weep.
- CriscoThis book was written to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening. Melted butter gives a far better crumb topping; olive oil works too.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh chilli. A pinch or two is the intent — it should sharpen the cream, not announce itself.
- Oven"Hot oven" in books of this date is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400–450°F, though period tables vary. The filling is already cooked, so you are only browning the crumbs: 8 to 10 minutes, or run it under the broiler.
- ShellsDeep sea-scallop shells, ramekins or small gratin dishes all work. Set them on a sheet pan; the filling bubbles over easily when heaped high as directed.
- The onionHalf the volume of the scallops is a lot of onion. The recipe doesn't say what to fry it in; sweat it slowly until soft and translucent with no colour — browning it turns the dish sweet and muddies the pale look the garnish is meant to set off.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble in the 1910s, which explains why Crisco appears in a scallop gratin: the book is a year of menus built to demonstrate that the new shortening could do everything butter and lard did. The dish itself is the standard Anglo-American treatment of the scallop at the time — poached, sauced, crumbed and returned to its own shell, a method borrowed from French coquilles cookery, where serving in the shell (coquille Saint-Jacques) is generally traced to the scallop shell worn as a badge by pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. Why it is filed under "Eggs" here is not explained by the book itself; one might guess that a rich creamed gratin in small shells served much the same purpose at luncheon or supper as an egg dish.