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Fried Scallops, Finnoise Sauce
Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika, one and a half pounds very fresh scallops. Roll in flour, dip in beaten egg, then roll in fresh bread crumbs and plunge in boiling fat to fry for six minutes. Lift up and drain on a cloth, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six quarters of lemon and a little parsley greens, and serve with a Finnoise sauce separately.
A straightforward breaded deep-fry, with one number in it that no modern cook should follow.
- Six minutes is far too longSea scallops cook through in about two to three minutes in 375F fat, by which time the crumb coating is brown. At six minutes they tighten into rubber and weep their liquid into the breading. Pull them the moment the crust colors and cut one open to check: the center should be barely opaque.
- "Boiling fat"Period usage for deep fat at frying heat; the bubbling is water leaving the food, not the fat itself boiling. Use 365-375F and fry in two or three batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Which scallops1 1/2 lb of sea scallops (roughly 1 1/2 in across) is what this suits. Small bay scallops overcook before the crumbs brown. Buy dry-packed scallops if you can; the wet, phosphate-treated kind shed water and steam the coating loose.
- Prep that the recipe assumesBlot the scallops thoroughly dry before flouring and remove the small tough side muscle if it is still attached. Wet scallops will not hold a three-stage breading.
- Finnoise sauceNot included here; the recipe simply refers the cook elsewhere. Descriptions of "finnoise" in period sauce lists vary, and the reader should check whether the book gives its own version. Failing that, a paprika-and-herb cream sauce serves the same purpose.
- The folded napkinPeriod plating: fried food was dressed on a linen napkin on the platter to absorb fat and keep the crust crisp. A rack or paper does the job; the napkin is presentation, not technique.
- Yield1 1/2 lb serves four as a first course, or three as a light main with the sauce and lemon.
The International Cook Book is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it reflects the late-nineteenth-century restaurant habit of filing dishes under a nationality or a place name. "Finnoise" appears to be one of those geographic sauce labels, though its standing in the classical French repertoire and what such a sauce reliably contained are both uncertain, and the connection to Finland is at best nominal. The dish itself is a good record of how scallops were treated in American dining rooms of the period: crumbed, deep-fried, sent out on a folded napkin with lemon quarters and a sauceboat alongside, so that the kitchen's sauce work stayed visible and separate from the fry.