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Fried Scallops
Place one and one-half pounds of very fresh scallops on a plate. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper, mix well in the seasoning, then lightly roll in flour, dip in beaten egg and lightly roll in bread crumbs. Arrange in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for eight minutes. Remove, thoroughly drain on a towel, sprinkle over two saltspoons salt, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin, decorate with six pieces of lemon and parsley greens and serve.
A plain breaded deep-fry that needs only two corrections: the frying time and the salt. Everything else translates directly.
- Eight minutes is far too longScallops are cooked through in 1½ to 2 minutes in properly hot fat, by which time the crumb coating is golden. Eight minutes gives you rubber in a shell of burnt breadcrumbs. Fry in small batches so the fat temperature does not crash, and pull them the moment the crust colours.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble furiously around food, which in practice is 350–375°F. Use a thermometer rather than the visual cue.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the finishing salt is about half a teaspoon on top of the teaspoon already seasoning the scallops. That is heavy for 1½ lb of shellfish — season the scallops lightly and salt again to taste after draining.
- Which scallopsThe recipe does not say, though the quantity and the deep-frying suit the larger sea scallops. Buy "dry" or diver scallops if you can; wet-packed scallops are soaked in a phosphate solution, weep in the pan and will steam their breading loose instead of frying it.
- Dry them firstBlot the scallops thoroughly before seasoning. Surface moisture is what makes flour gum up and the crumb coat slide off in the fat.
- Draining and the napkin"Drain on a towel" means paper towels now; a wire rack is better still, since it keeps the underside crisp. The folded napkin on the serving dish is period presentation, and would have caught any remaining fat. A hot platter alone is fine.
- Yield1½ lb serves four as a main course with the six lemon wedges the recipe specifies, or six as a first course.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini was long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe carries the marks of that kitchen - the wire frying basket, the folded napkin under the fried food, the lemon and parsley finish common to fried dishes in restaurants of the period. Scallops were then a comparatively cheap Atlantic shellfish, dredged along the New England coast and shipped shucked, since in America only the adductor muscle was eaten and the roe discarded (in France and Britain the coral was, and is, kept). The dish is essentially a French friture - flour, egg, crumb, hot fat - applied to a local ingredient, which is what the book's title promises throughout.