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Scallop Salad
Soak 1 pint of scallops for one hour in salted water. Drain, boil for five minutes, then plunge into ice water. Mix with 1 cupful of celery, which has been cut into half-inch lengths, then stir in some French dressing. Serve on watercress, and garnish with chopped olives and hard-boiled eggs.
A straightforward cold seafood salad; the only real risk is overcooking the scallops.
- QuantityA pint of shucked scallops is roughly 1 lb, which with the celery would stretch to about four as a first course. Bay scallops suit this better than large sea scallops, which should be halved crosswise.
- Cooking timeFive minutes is too long for modern shucked scallops. Poach them in barely simmering salted water 1 to 2 minutes, until just opaque at the centre, then chill; longer and they tighten into rubber.
- The ice bathThis is the hinge of the recipe. Move them straight from the pot into ice water so carryover heat stops immediately, then drain thoroughly on a towel or the dressing will slide off.
- The salt soakThe hour in salted water was presumably to draw out grit and any sand from the shell. With supermarket scallops a brief rinse is enough; a short soak in lightly salted water does no harm but adds nothing.
- French dressingIn a book of this period this means a plain vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in roughly three to one, not the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under the name today. Dress the scallops while cool, not cold, so they take up flavour.
- CeleryHalf-inch lengths from the inner ribs give the right crunch. Chill the cut celery in cold water for ten minutes to crisp it before mixing.
- AssemblyDress and combine no more than an hour ahead. Watercress wilts under vinaigrette, so put the leaves down at the last moment and spoon the salad over.
Cold scallops dressed with oil and vinegar belong to the era of American salad-making around the turn of the twentieth century, when ice was more reliably available in city kitchens. Scallops were plentiful along the Atlantic coast, and books of this kind treat them much as they treat lobster, shrimp and crab: poached, chilled, cut with celery for crunch, bound with a dressing and set on greens with the standard garnishes of the day, chopped olives and hard-boiled egg.