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Scallop and Tomato Salad
Clear one pint scallops, parboil, and drain. Add juice of one lemon, cover, and let stand one hour. Drain, dry between towels, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in flour, egg, and stale bread crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain on brown paper. Cool, cut in halves, marinate with dressing, and serve garnished with sliced tomatoes and watercress, Dressing. Mix one teaspoon finely chopped shallot, threefourths teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon paprika, two tablespoons lemon juice, and four tablespoons olive oil. 7 Salmon à la Martin, Ravigôte Mayonnaise Drain one can salmon, rinse, dry, and separate in flakes. Moisten with Ravigôte Mayonnaise, arrange on a bed of lettuce, mask with mayonnaise, and garnish with canned pimentoes cut in triangles, and truffles cut in fancy shapes. Ravigôte Mayonnaise. Mix two tablespoons cooked spinach, one tablespoon capers, one-half shallot finely chopped, three anchovies, one-third cup parsley, and one-half cup watercress. Pound in mortar until thoroughly macerated, then force through a very fine strainer. Add to one-half the recipe for Mayonnaise Dressing I (see p. 326).
A fried-scallop salad from the era when a "salad" often meant a cooked protein cooled and dressed. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the scallops twice.
- A pint of scallopsScallops were sold shucked by liquid measure, and a pint is roughly 1 lb of meat, enough for about four salad portions. "Clear" here most likely stands for clean: rinsing away grit and, where present, removing the tough side muscle.
- Parboil brieflyDrop them into salted simmering water for no more than a minute — just until they turn opaque at the edge — then drain and cool. They finish cooking in the fryer, and scallops held longer than that in hot water turn springy and squeeze out their moisture.
- The lemon hourAn hour in lemon juice both seasons and firms the surface. Keep it in the refrigerator, not at room temperature, and drain and dry thoroughly or the coating will slide off.
- Deep fatFry at 375°F, in batches, for about a minute and a half until the crumbs are golden. "Stale bread crumbs" means dry crumbs from day-old bread, coarser than the powdery canned sort; panko behaves similarly.
- Brown paperGrocers' paper was the standard draining surface. Paper towels or a wire rack over a tray do the job; a rack keeps the crust crisper.
- Cut in halvesThis assumes large sea scallops, halved across the grain after cooling so the dressing reaches the interior. Small bay scallops should be left whole.
- The dressingOil and lemon juice in a 2:1 ratio with shallot, salt and paprika, close to a plain French dressing; it makes about 6 tablespoons, enough for a pound of scallops. Whisk it just before using; it will separate on standing.
- ServingThe recipe has the cooled, halved scallops marinated in the dressing before plating; keep that stage short if you want the crumb coating to stay crisp. Serves about four as a first course, with the tomato and watercress arranged around rather than tossed in.
The salad chapter reflects a moment when American hotel and cooking-school cookery had absorbed a French vocabulary of composed salads: a cooked, cooled, marinated main element set on greens with a sharp dressing, rather than the mayonnaise-bound mixtures that would dominate later. Scallops were cheap and abundant on the New England coast, and were sold shucked and by the pint, which is why the book measures them that way instead of by weight. Frying them in crumbs before dressing them is a technique borrowed from the French salade of fried fish, and it does something a plain poached scallop cannot: the crust holds the acid dressing on the outside while the interior stays sweet. The paprika in the dressing is a period marker he turon the century as a milder, more colourful alternative to cayenne.