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Scallops, Stewed
Procure the scallops as fresh as possible. Open the shell like an oyster, trim away the beard and the black parts. Wash the scallops in two or three waters, then put them into a saucepan, pour over them as much water as will cover them, and boil them gently till tender. Take them up, thicken the liquor with flour and butter, and season it with pepper, salt, and vinegar: serve the fish on a hot dish with a little of the sauce poured over. Time to boil, one hour. Probable cost, when plentiful, 1s. per dozen. Sufficient, a dozen for three or four persons.
A plain Victorian treatment of whole scallops in the shell, and one that needs a single decisive correction before it can go on a plate.
- Ignore the hourScallop muscle is set after 60 to 90 seconds of gentle poaching and turns to eraser rubber long before an hour has passed. Bring the water barely to a simmer, slip the scallops in, and lift them out as soon as they turn opaque; the coral takes about the same time.
- Build the sauce firstBecause the cooking is so brief, the poaching liquor will be thin and barely flavoured. Poach the trimmings and shells for ten minutes to make a stock, strain it, thicken that, and use the scallops' own brief poaching only to cook the fish.
- What the beard isThe frilly grey membrane around the edge is the gill skirt, and the dark sac is the stomach. Both come away with a fingertip once the shell is open. The orange coral is edible and was expected to be served.
- Opening themSlide a knife along the flat upper shell to cut the muscle free, as with an oyster. A minute in a hot dry pan, or a brief steam, will pop reluctant shells, but do not let them cook through at that stage.
- Thickening"flour and butter" is not specified further, but in this period it usually meant butter and flour kneaded together raw and whisked into the hot liquor in small pieces rather than a cooked roux. Roughly 1 tablespoon of each will thicken a cup of liquid.
- The vinegarThe type is unspecified; malt or cider vinegar would have been the likeliest household options. A scant teaspoon is enough to lift the sauce, and more will flatten the sweetness of the shellfish. Lemon does the same job with less aggression.
- Yield and costA dozen scallops for three or four people is still about right as a first course. The shilling a dozen, and the qualifier "when plentiful", place them among the more ordinary shellfish rather than among luxuries.
- ServingWarm the deep half-shells and serve one or two scallops in each with the sauce spooned over, or plate them on toast so the bread takes up the sauce.
Cassell's assumes the British scallop as sold in the shell, roe attached, which is why the instructions begin with opening rather than with a tub of trimmed white muscles. An hour for scallops is a fair illustration of how much long cooking cost in texture. The note "when plentiful" reflects a seasonal, unrefrigerated market in which the same dish might be cheap one week and unobtainable the next. The gratin-in-the-shell preparations we now associate with the word coquille came into English cooking from French practice later, and this entry sits at the older, plainer end of the tradition.