Fried Scallops
Wash the scallops, drain them and dry thoroughly. Season fine cracker crumbs with salt and pepper, dip the scallops in beaten egg, then in the crumbs, and fry in hot fat. Or they may be simply seasoned and rolled in flour and then fried. Serve with sauce tartare.
A plain deep-fry with a two-word method and no numbers at all, which is typical of Butterick's fish chapter. The details worth pinning down are the fat temperature, the scallop itself, and how briefly it needs to cook.
- The title is a typesetting slipThe title is almost certainly "Fried Scallops" with the opening F missing; nothing in the method suggests any other technique.
- Cook them fastThis is the hinge. Scallops are done when the surface is opaque and the centre still faintly translucent -- roughly 1 to 2 minutes in fat at 375F for sea scallops, less for bay. Held longer they tighten into rubber and weep liquid into the crust.
- Hot fat means 365-375FHot fat -- the recipe gives no temperature and does not say how deep the fat should be; period frying was judged by eye. If you deep-fry, 365-375F is the useful range: below 350F the crumbs soak, above 385F they colour before the scallop warms through.
- Dry them thoroughly, and mean itThe instruction is doing real work. Scallops are packed wet, and surface moisture will steam the breading loose. Blot on paper, then leave uncovered in the fridge for a few minutes before breading.
- Wet-packed vs dry-packedMost supermarket scallops today are treated with sodium tripolyphosphate, which makes them hold water and resist browning. Dry-packed (untreated) scallops are worth seeking out for anything fried.
- Cracker crumbsIn 1911 this meant soda or water crackers crushed fine. Unsalted saltines or plain water biscuits give the same light, sandy crust; panko is coarser and behaves differently.
- Sauce tartareThe period version is mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins, parsley and often a little onion or shallot -- sharper and chunkier than bottled tartar sauce.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon 1/3 to 1/2 lb of scallops per person as a main, and fry in batches so the fat does not drop below temperature.
Scallops reached American tables in quantity in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the bay scallop fisheries of Long Island, Nantucket and the Massachusetts shore were being worked commercially and rail ice-cars could move shellfish inland. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, put out its cook book for the same audience of middle-class housekeepers, and the recipe is terse, giving little beyond the coating and the sauce. American cooks of the period ate the adductor muscle alone, discarding the roe and mantle that European kitchens often kept -- a habit that persists and is the reason a US scallop looks like a white cylinder rather than a whole animal. Sauce tartare, by then thoroughly naturalised from French service cookery, was a common accompaniment to fried fish in books of this decade.