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Brochette of Scallops with Fresh Mushrooms
Place one and a half pounds fresh, large scallops on a plate, season with half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons pepper, and mix them well in the seasoning. Cut two ounces raw, lean bacon in half-inch-square, thin slices. Thoroughly wash four ounces very fresh, sound mushrooms, plunge them in boiling water for five minutes, drain on a cloth, then cut them into about the same size as the scallops. Have six clean skewers, then run in a piece of bacon, then one scallop, after this a piece of fresh mushroom, another scallop, a piece bacon, another scallop, a mushroom, and so on until the six skewers are completed. Lightly roll in oil, then in bread crumbs, arrange them on a double broiler and broil on a brisk fire for five minutes on each side, remove, dress on a hot dish, spread a little melted butter over, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A straightforward grilled skewer, but the timing belongs to an era of smaller, wetter scallops and much hotter open fires. Cut the cooking time hard.
- Cook them far lessFive minutes a side will turn modern scallops to rubber. Large sea scallops need about 2 to 3 minutes per side under a preheated broiler or over hot coals, until just opaque at the center.
- Par-cook the baconRaw bacon cut in half-inch squares will not render in the few minutes the scallops can stand. Cook the pieces briefly in a pan until the fat begins to run but they are still pliable, then thread them.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three is three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper for a pound and a half of scallops. That is assertive by current taste; half that is plenty.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler and not an oven pan, but a hinged two-sided wire grill that clamps the food so it can be flipped whole. A flat rack over a sheet pan under the oven broiler works, or a fish grill on the barbecue.
- "Brisk fire"Direct, high heat: coals you can hold a hand over for only a second or two, or a broiler element preheated with the rack 3 to 4 inches below.
- The mushroomsFive minutes in boiling water would have firmed them and helped rid them of grit, though the recipe does not say why. Cultivated buttons need 1 minute at most, or simply halve them raw; overblanched mushrooms shed water and slide off the skewer.
- Dry the scallopsMany supermarket scallops are treated and hold water, which will steam rather than brown and wash the crumbs off. Buy dry-packed if you can and pat them thoroughly dry before oiling and crumbing.
- SkewersMetal is best here; soak wooden ones 30 minutes so they survive a brisk fire.
- YieldSix skewers: three main-course portions, or six as a first course.
Brochette is simply the French word for a small spit or skewer, and by the late nineteenth century it is often said to have become restaurant shorthand on American menus for anything threaded and grilled — kidneys, oysters, sweetbreads, scallops. The pattern here, alternating shellfish with bacon and mushroom and rolling the whole thing in oil and crumbs before broiling, was a familiar approach in kitchens of the period: the fat and crumb coat shielded delicate seafood from the fierce heat of a coal-fired broiler, which had no thermostat and no gentle setting. Sea scallops were usually sold already shucked as the white adductor muscle alone, which is why the recipe can assume "large scallops on a plate" with no mention of the shell or roe that a European cook would have expected. Its place in a book called The International Cook Book reflects the era's habit of treating French technique as the common language of the professional kitchen, whatever the local ingredient.