Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Scallops along with all the Scallops containing recipes presented on this site, with 34 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Scallops recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Scallops as a major wild food ingredient.



Scallops. Scallops are bivalve molluscs belonging to the Pectinidae family. They are a cosmopolitan family and are found in all the world's oceans. Many species are highly-prized as food. They are hermaphrodite, and the male gonads mature first. There are more than 30 genera and around 350 species in the family Pectinidae. Some pectinidae live attached by means of a filament they secrete, others are simply recumbent, but a form of jet-propulsion created by repeatedly clapping their valves closed can propel them swiftly but erratically through the water when they sense the presence of a predator such as a starfish.

In general, shells of scallops consist of two valves, which are circular to broadly ovate with the right valve usually more inflated than the left valve. The valves become narrower and pointed at the umbones which have flattened triangular extensions on both sides, known as auricles or ears. The upper edge of the ears forms a somewhat straight hinge line. The umbones project only slightly above this line. Most Pectinidae have radial ribs and concentric ridges, although a few are smooth. The ctenolium is a key shell feature that separates Pectinidae from all other families.

Like the true oysters (family Ostreidae), scallops have a central adductor muscle, and thus the inside of their shells has a characteristic central scar, marking the point of attachment for this muscle. The adductor muscle of scallops is larger and more developed than that of oysters, because they are active swimmers; scallops are in fact the only migratory bivalve. Their shell shape tends to be highly regular, recalling one archetypal form of a seashell. Scallops have up to 100 simple eyes strung around the edges of their mantles like a string of beads. They are reflector eyes, about 1mm in diameter, with a retina that is more complex than those of other bivalves.

Scallops are characterized by having two types of meat in one shell: the adductor muscle, called "scallop" which is white and meaty, and the roe, called "coral", which is red or white and soft. The two main species sought as edibles in Britain are the King Scallop (also known as the Great Scallop), Pecten maximus and the Queen Scallop, Chlamys opercularis. The king scallop is by far the most commonly sold, whilst the Queen Scallop is rarer and is considered a prized delicacy.

Scallops have lent their name to the culinary term scalloped, which originally referred to seafood creamed and served hot in the shell. Since Victorian times, however, it has come to mean a a creamed casserole dish such as scalloped potatoes, which contains no seafood at all. The term scallop itself is derived from the Old French escalope, literally meaning 'shell'.