Home › The Principles of Cookery › Scallops, Fried
Scallops, Fried
Drain and dry one dozen scallops, trim away the beards, roll them in flour, and fry them in a little butter in a frying-pan, for about ten minutes. Serve hot, garnished with parsley. Probable cost, 1s. per dozen.
A three-line recipe that works perfectly well once you ignore the timing, which is the one number in it that modern practice has completely overturned.
- Ten minutes is far too longScallop muscle sets in about a minute per side over decent heat and turns to rubber well before ten minutes are up. Cook them until the flat faces are golden and the centre is barely opaque — roughly 60-90 seconds a side for a plump scallop, less for small queens.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge. A wet scallop steams in its own liquid and never browns, no matter how hot the pan. Blot them on kitchen paper until the surface feels tacky, then flour and cook immediately.
- "Beards"The book assumes scallops bought live in the shell. The beard is the grey-brown frill of gill tissue around the edge; that and the dark stomach sac come away with the fingers. The orange roe (coral) is edible and traditionally kept, though shops today often sell the white muscle alone, and roe-off is close to standard in the United States.
- A dozen scallopsThat is two servings as a main course or four as a starter, depending on size. If yours are the small queen scallops, a dozen will not feed two.
- Butter alone will burnAt the heat needed for colour, plain butter darkens before the scallops brown. Use half butter and half a neutral oil, or add the butter for the last thirty seconds and spoon it over.
- Pan and crowdingUse the widest heavy pan you have and leave a finger's width between scallops. Crowded scallops drop the pan temperature and poach rather than fry; do two batches if needed.
- Probable costOne shilling a dozen suggests shellfish was priced modestly here. Scallops are now a luxury item, which is worth knowing before you treat them as casually as the recipe does.
Cassell's belongs to the era when scallops were landed in quantity around the British coast — the Channel, the Irish Sea, the west of Scotland — and sold cheaply in the shell, roe and all. The deep, fluted lower shell doubled as a serving dish and a baking dish, which is why so many Victorian scallop recipes direct the cook to return the flesh to the shell; the name coquille Saint-Jacques is generally traced to the pilgrim badge of Santiago de Compostela, a scallop shell being the traditional token of that route. Flouring and frying in butter is the plainest treatment in the book's repertoire, a sign that the shellfish was treated as everyday food rather than as the expensive centrepiece it has since become.