Fried Scallops
Clean the scallops; cook until they begin to shrivel; drain and dry between towels. Roll in fine bread crumbs, salt and pepper; dip in beaten egg; roll again in crumbs and lower for a minute or two into very hot fat. Drain on paper and serve.
A short, workable recipe for breaded deep-fried scallops. The only real trap is the pre-cooking step, which by modern standards is one cooking too many.
- The pre-cooking step"Cook until they begin to shrivel" most likely means a brief pre-cooking in liquid; the recipe says to drain and dry afterwards, but it does not say what liquid or for how long. Scallops are muscle with very little connective tissue; taken far past that point they go rubbery, and they will still be fried afterwards. Cooks today often skip the pre-cooking entirely and simply pat the raw scallops very dry before breading.
- CleaningCleaning here means removing the small tough side muscle, the crescent-shaped tab on the edge of the scallop, and rinsing off grit. Sea scallops are usually sold already shucked and trimmed; bay scallops need only a rinse.
- Wet or dry scallopsUntreated ("dry") scallops brown properly. Scallops soaked in a phosphate solution, common at supermarket counters, weep liquid and will steam the breading loose. If the ones you buy sit in milky white liquid, dry them hard between towels as the recipe says, and expect less crust.
- Very hot fatThe book does not define this; for deep frying it conventionally means somewhere in the region of 375-390F. The breading is only there to brown; the scallops are already cooked or nearly so, and cooler fat will soak into the crumbs before the coating sets.
- "A minute or two"About right for breaded scallops in hot fat. Fry only until the crumbs are deep gold — a large sea scallop needs roughly 90 seconds, bay scallops less. Work in small batches so the fat temperature holds.
- Breading orderThe double crumbing (crumbs, egg, crumbs) is what modern kitchens do with a flour-egg-crumb sequence. Both work; the first coat of dry crumbs on a dried scallop gives the egg something to grip.
- Yield and servingServing -- the recipe gives no quantities or yield. As a rough guide, about 1 1/2 lb of scallops serves four as a main course with lemon and tartar sauce, or six as a first course. Fry to order — breaded scallops soften within minutes of leaving the fat.
Scallops appear in American cookbooks of this period chiefly fried, in a cream "scallop" or scallop shell gratin, and in chowder. Bay scallops from Nantucket and the Long Island shore supported a commercial fishery from the second half of the nineteenth century, and shucked scallops were shipped inland on ice, so they could be treated as a fish-counter item rather than a coastal luxury. American practice has generally been to eat only the adductor muscle, while European cooks more often keep the coral, or roe, which is why a French recipe for coquilles will look different from this one. Pre-cooking fish and shellfish before frying appears in Victorian and Edwardian fish cookery and reflects a period preference for thorough cooking that the modern kitchen has largely reversed.