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Scallops En Coquilles
Boil in slightly salted water for five minutes one and a half pounds fresh scallops; drain. Hash very finely six sound shallots and place them in a saucepan with an ounce butter. Gently cook for five minutes without browning, stirring well, then add four tablespoons flour, stir until well heated, add two gills hot milk and one gill scallop liquor. Stir well until it boils. Drop in the scallops and season with a teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper, adding two tablespoons good sherry. Stir well again and let cook for three minutes. Have six clean individual "table shells" and fill them with the preparation. Spread two tablespoons grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese over them equally, and place in a hot oven to bake for eight minutes. Dress on a dish and serve.
A workable gratin, but the scallops are cooked three separate times in the original sequence. Cut the first two stages hard and let the oven do the rest.
- Do not boil the scallops five minutesFive minutes in simmering water, three more in the sauce, then eight in a hot oven will give you erasers. Poach them 60-90 seconds only, just until opaque at the edge, then fold them into the finished sauce off the heat and go straight to the oven.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills hot milk is 1 cup and one gill scallop liquor is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which is a generous but not unreasonable amount of cayenne for six portions.
- Scallop liquorHere it means the salted water the scallops were poached in, not the liquid in a shucked shell. Save it before draining; reduce it slightly if it tastes thin.
- The sauce is very thickThe sauce is thick -- Four tablespoons flour to 1.5 cups liquid gives a heavy bechamel, stiff enough to hold its shape in the shell, which suits a gratin filling. If you want it looser, drop to three tablespoons, but do not thin it so far that it slumps out of the shells in the oven.
- ShallotsSix is a lot of shallot for this quantity of sauce; two or three modern ones, finely minced, is closer to the intent. Sweat them in butter over low heat with no colour at all, or the sauce turns beige and oniony.
- "Table shells"Cleaned scallop shells or the ceramic coquilles sold for the purpose; individual gratin dishes or shallow 6-oz ramekins work identically. Set them on a sheet pan so they do not tip.
- A hot ovenRead that as 425-450F. Eight minutes is enough to melt and colour the cheese on a filling that is already hot; if it is not browned, finish it 60 seconds under the broiler rather than leaving it in longer.
- YieldSix filled shells, which is a first course for six or a lunch for three with bread and a salad.
The dish is the French coquilles Saint-Jacques under a half-anglicised name: the scallop shell was the badge of pilgrims to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela, and it became both the emblem of the mollusc and the vessel it was served in. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) collected several hundred such continental preparations for American households, and the recipe reads rather like a restaurant cook's note to himself, which may be close to what it is: Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York. The instruction to buy "clean individual table shells" is a period detail worth noticing, since it assumes a household that owns serving pieces for a single named dish.