What It Actually Means To 'Scallop' A Dish

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Cast your eyes over a holiday spread, and there's no mistaking the scalloped potatoes. It's something you know when you see and can certainly describe, but what does it actually mean to "scallop" a dish? To "scallop" something — usually potatoes — is to slice it thinly and bake it in layers with milk or cream until bubbling. The sauce is often infused with herbs, onion, or garlic, but that's the extent of the ingredients. Some people like to make a more indulgent recipe using cheese, but this ingredient is considered what separates scalloped potatoes and au gratin potatoes, along with the use of breadcrumbs on gratin.

So, what does this have to do with scallops? There are two schools of thought when it comes to the etymology of "scalloped" as a culinary term. The most persistent is that it evolved from a popular way to cook seafood, in which scallops, oysters, or minced fish were baked in a creamy sauce and served in actual scallop shells for elegant presentation. The second theory is that it comes from the French word "escalope" or old English collops, which meant a thin slice of something, usually meat. While the potatoes in scalloped potatoes are certainly thinly sliced, they're not crumbed and fried as a modern escalope-style recipe would be.

Regardless of which story you believe as to how "scalloped" dishes came to be named as such, a quick look through culinary history will show it hardly matters. At different times, the term has been applied to dishes that demonstrate elements of either, both, or neither of these origins. A dish of scalloped chicken might have meant thin pieces of fried meat served in sauce in the early 1800s, but a century later, you would expect a baked dish with layers of pre-cooked chicken in a creamy sauce topped with breadcrumbs or crushed crackers.

You might be familiar with scalloped oysters, a popular Southern recipe. These days, it's oysters baked with cream and breadcrumbs or crackers, but earlier versions included tomatoes and corn, or used only wine for the cooking liquid. Scalloped vegetables of the non-potato variety usually meant baking them in layers with a breadcrumb topping, while scalloped tomatoes prepared this way were recorded as early as the 1840s and are still served the same way today. Order a retro scalloped corn casserole, however, and you'll get something closer to scalloped potatoes.