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Scallops, Mrs. Duvivier
Place one and a half pounds very fresh scallops in a saucepan with a good gill sherry, two branches parsley, a half teaspoon salt and let slowly boil for five minutes, then remove celery. Lightly brown six finely chopped shallots in one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a small saucepan, add two Spanish sweet red peppers, cut into very small pieces, and cook for three minutes. Add a light tablespoon flour, stir well, strain scallop liquor into this pan, add a tablespoon tarragon vinegar and gently stir until it comes to a boil. Add scallops, lightly mix, cook for five minutes longer, pour scallops into a deep dish and serve.
A simple sherry-and-pimiento stew that needs only one real adjustment: the scallops must spend far less time in the pan than the original allows.
- Cook the scallops far lessFive minutes of boiling followed by five more in the sauce will leave them dense and rubbery. Poach them 1-2 minutes until just opaque, lift them out to hold the flavoured liquor, and return them to the finished sauce only long enough to heat through, perhaps 30 seconds.
- A gill of sherryHalf a cup. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than a sweet cream sherry, which will fight the tarragon vinegar.
- "Remove celery"Evidently a slip; no celery is called for anywhere in the recipe. Read it as remove the parsley branches, which have done their work in the poaching liquid.
- Spanish sweet red peppersThese are pimientos, at the time sold canned or jarred and already cooked. Two jarred pimientos, drained and diced, are the direct equivalent; two fresh red bell peppers will need longer than the three minutes given to soften.
- Scallop liquorStrain the poaching liquid rather than discarding it, and expect about half a cup after five minutes of reduction. If your scallops gave up a lot of water the sauce may be thin; let it bubble a moment before the scallops go back in.
- Shallots and flourSix shallots finely chopped is roughly half to three-quarters of a cup, depending on their size. Cook the flour with them for a full minute before the liquid goes in, or the sauce will taste pasty.
- Which scallopsSea scallops, cut across into two thick coins if very large, hold up better than small bay scallops, which will overcook while you look at them. Buy dry-packed if you can; treated scallops shed water and dilute the sauce.
- YieldA pound and a half serves three as a main course or four as a first course. Serve in a warmed deep dish with rice or good bread for the sauce.
Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, filled his books with dishes carrying personal names, and "Mrs. Duvivier" appears to belong to that habit rather than to any documented tradition; the name is the attribution, and nothing more is known of her from the text. The dish itself is French in method -- shallots sweated in butter, a flour binding, a poaching liquor strained back into the sauce -- with two ingredients that suit its moment: canned Spanish pimientos, which were reaching American groceries in the early years of the twentieth century, and tarragon vinegar, a common pantry bottle of the period and one way of getting tarragon flavour out of season. Scallops were then sold shucked as the white adductor muscle alone, which is why the recipe assumes no shells and no roe.