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Scallop Patties
Prepare and keep hot six patties. Plunge one and a half pounds very fresh scallops into a pint boiling water with half a teaspoon salt for five minutes. Drain, and save a gill of the liquor. Mix in a saucepan half an ounce butter with an ounce flour, heat for one minute, then pour in the gill of scallop liquor and one and a half gills milk. Season with three saltspoons salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix with a wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, then add the scallops and two tablespoons sherry, lightly mix and let cook for five minutes. Dilute an egg yolk with half a gill cream, the juice of quarter of a sound lemon, add to the scallops, and stir well while heating for two minutes. Remove, dress the patties on a large dish, then fill them up with the scallop preparation, place the covers on, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A creamed scallop filling for pastry shells, written in the clipped Delmonico's house style. The measurements are all pre-metric restaurant shorthand, and the cooking times belong to an era that liked its shellfish firm.
- "Patties" means pastry shellsNot meat patties: these are baked puff-pastry cases with lids, sold now as vol-au-vent or bouchee shells. Six of them, kept hot, are what the first sentence is asking for; the recipe gives no oven or temperature.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz), so a gill of scallop liquor is 1/2 cup and one and a half gills of milk is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, making the seasoning 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne and 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.
- Cut the cayenneHalf a teaspoon of cayenne in roughly a cup and a half of sauce is aggressive by current taste, on top of the salt already in the poaching water. Start with a pinch and adjust at the end.
- The scallops are cooked three times overFive minutes in boiling water, five more in the sauce, then two minutes with the liaison will give you rubber. Poach them 60-90 seconds just to firm and release their liquor, lift them out, and return them only at the very end to warm through.
- Save the liquor properlyA pint of water for a pound and a half of scallops yields a thin broth; strain it and reduce it a little before using the 1/2 cup, or the sauce will taste watery. Large sea scallops should be cut in halves or thirds so they fit the shells.
- The egg yolk is the hingeOnce the yolk, cream and lemon juice go in, the sauce must not boil or it will curdle and the lemon will encourage it. Take the pan off the heat, temper the yolk mixture with a spoonful of hot sauce first, then return it to low heat for a minute or two.
- Roux proportionsHalf an ounce butter (1 tablespoon) to an ounce flour (about 3 1/2 to 4 tablespoons) is flour-heavy; equal weights -- 1 tablespoon butter to roughly 2 tablespoons flour -- gives a smoother sauce for this quantity of liquid.
- YieldSix filled shells, enough for six as a first course or three as a light main dish with a salad.
Scallops in a cream sauce served in a pastry case is a French restaurant formula. The clipped, quantity-first prose here, with its gills and saltspoons and its instruction to "dress the patties on a large dish," is professional kitchen writing rather than domestic: portions for six, timings to the minute, sherry and nutmeg as a matter of course. It is worth noting that in Britain and France the whole scallop including the coral roe is eaten, while American markets have long sold only the white adductor muscle, shucked at sea; a recipe like this, calling simply for "very fresh scallops" by the pound, assumes the American practice.