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Scallop Cocktail
1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon parsley, chopped 1 teaspoon chives, chopped 1/2 teaspoon olive oil 10 drops Tabasco sauce 1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 2 tablespoons vinegar 8 tablespoons tomato catsup 1 teaspoon grated horseradish root 1 pint scallops Mix above ingredients, except scallops. Cook scallops five minutes in a sauce pan, drain, chill thoroughly. Cut in halves. Add sauce and serve. Sufficient for 6.
A cold cocktail sauce built from pantry staples, poured over poached scallops. The only real decision the original leaves to you is how to cook the scallops, and that is where the dish is won or lost.
- Five minutes is too longScallops set at about 125-130F and turn springy and dry past that. Bay scallops need 60-90 seconds in barely simmering liquid, sea scallops two minutes; they should be just opaque at the centre when they come out, since they will firm slightly as they chill.
- The missing liquid"Cook scallops five minutes in a sauce pan" gives no medium. Poach them in lightly salted water or dry white wine, enough to cover, held just below a simmer. Dropping them into a dry pan will brown them, which is not what this cold sauce is dressed for.
- A pint of scallopsShellfish were commonly sold by liquid measure. A pint of shucked scallops is roughly 1 lb / 450 g, which is right for six small cocktail glasses.
- HalvingThe instruction to cut in halves assumes large sea scallops. Bay scallops or small queens are best left whole; halving them after chilling only shreds them into the sauce.
- Horseradish rootGrated fresh root is far hotter and cleaner than the bottled prepared kind. If substituting prepared horseradish, use about a tablespoon and drain it first, or the vinegar in the jar will thin the sauce.
- Season the sauce cold, then tasteA teaspoon of salt against 8 tablespoons of catsup is generous, and catsup brands vary in salt and sugar. Mix the sauce, chill it for an hour so the mustard and Worcestershire come forward, then adjust before it meets the scallops.
- ServingSix portions. The recipe specifies only the yield; cocktails of this kind were customarily presented in stemmed glasses set into crushed ice, with the sauce spooned over shortly before serving so the scallops do not sit in the vinegar.
Shellfish cocktails moved from the oyster bar onto the home table around the turn of the twentieth century, when oyster and clam cocktails became a standard first course in American hotel dining; scallop and shrimp versions followed as cold shellfish grew easier to get. The sauce here is the familiar catsup-horseradish-Worcestershire formula, its heat pushed up with counted drops of Tabasco. The cocktail glass had by this period become shorthand for a smart, up-to-date opening course, requiring no carving, no last-minute cookery and no hot plates.