Stewed Scallops
Wash and drain a pint of scallops. Make a pint of thin white sauce, add the scallops and simmer about fifteen minutes in a double boiler.
SCALLOPS À LA NEWBERG-See Chapter on Chafing-dish Recipes.
P
A plain milk stew of the sort that filled the fish chapter of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks. One instruction needs overruling outright.
- Fifteen minutes is far too longScallops are almost pure fast-setting muscle protein; they are done when they turn opaque, which takes two to three minutes in barely simmering sauce. Held for a quarter of an hour they contract, squeeze out their moisture and turn to rubber. Bring the sauce to a bare simmer, slip the scallops in off the heat or over very low heat, and serve as soon as they lose their translucency.
- A pint of scallopsShellfish were sold by liquid measure at the fish counter. A pint of shucked scallops is roughly a pound. Small bay scallops can go in whole; large sea scallops should be halved crosswise so they cook evenly in the short time given above.
- Thin white sauceA thin white sauce is butter and flour cooked together with milk whisked in and simmered until it just coats a spoon; period books generally reckon about a tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of milk for the thin version, so roughly double that for the pint called for here. Season with salt and white pepper, and if you like a little nutmeg or mace, which turns up often in period fish-in-cream dishes.
- Drain them properlyScallops shed a surprising amount of liquid. Wash, then drain on a towel and blot; otherwise the water thins the sauce to milk. If you want the sauce to taste of scallop, use the drained liquor as part of the pint.
- The double boilerIt exists here to keep the milk sauce from catching and scorching, not to cook the scallops slowly. With modern heavy-bottomed pans a low burner does the same job, and gives you the control to pull the pan the moment the scallops firm.
- Yield and servingA pint of scallops in a pint of sauce serves about four as a first course or three as a light main dish. Creamed shellfish of this kind was commonly sent to table on toast points, in pastry shells, or over plain boiled rice.
- The trailing line"Scallops à la Newberg — See Chapter on Chafing-dish Recipes" is a cross-reference belonging to the next entry, not part of this recipe. The stray "P" is a page artifact.
Butterick, the dress-pattern company, published its cook book for the same audience as its magazines: middle-class households running a small kitchen without a professional cook. That shows in the fish chapter, where expensive or perishable ingredients are routinely extended with white sauce, and where the double boiler is a common safeguard against a coal range's uneven heat. Scallops reached inland tables in quantity only after refrigerated rail shipping made shucked shellfish practical; because only the adductor muscle travels well, Americans came to know the scallop as a white disc rather than a whole animal, which is still the case. The fifteen-minute simmer here fits a period preference for cooking shellfish thoroughly, the same instinct behind the overcooked boiled oysters in books of the era. The Newberg cross-reference points to the fashionable alternative: a chafing-dish preparation in sherry and egg-yolk cream, generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, and by 1900 a standard way to make shellfish look like a party.