Ok, when I was growing up it was common knowledge that while “bay scallops”, the small kind, were really from shellfish, the larger “sea scallops” were actally made from the flesh of skate, shark, or some other “trash fish”. Recently after having so many childhood myths demolished by Cecil, I’ve started wondering about this one too. Anyone know what the real deal is?
When I was a kid in Florida, I recall once we were out on a boat in the bay, where it is very shallow, and came across some guys on another boat who were using a gig to fish for rays. We asked them what they did with them and they said they stamped out meat from the wings and sold it as sea scallops.
I have also collected scallops from grass beds off the coast (this is really fun but a lot of work for little reward). The difference, as best as I can tell between the real stuff and the fake stuff is the striations in the real scallop muscles. These run along the muscle from the top to the bottom as they help the scallop to open and close. This does not appear in ray meat. To make things trickier this is more noticeable in the bay scallops than sea scallops anyway.
Personally I wouldn’t worry about it; if it tastes good then it’s not a “trash fish”.
Sea scallops are not made from shark or skate. Sea scallops are like bay scallops, only bigger.
Sometimes, counterfeit sea scallops are sold. This is what is made of shark or skate.
Hmmm? I thought we did a thread here sometime ago about whether there “really” were fake scallops out there made out of shark, skate, or whatever. Wherever I saw it(here or snopes), the final answer was “people always talk about this being so, but no one has any proof.”
I believe I can tell the difference, and I believe that this does happen. If you can get someone to bankroll me I’ll go find them, then you can get them to do the genetic testing. Short of that, the only way to “prove” this is to get someone who is both a) a reliable source and b) is part of the scam. (b) eliminates the possibility of (a), no? Or we could go catch some rays and cut them up and see if you could sell them to a seafood market.
FWIW, in Europe it is very common to see ray or skate on menus. It tastes like scallops, but it is served whole with the cartilage still inside. It is also considered delicious.
Nothing in the GQ Archives for the last 6 months.
Found this.
http://www.nyseafood.org/about/scallops.asp
I find the factoid “yeah, some unscrupulous restaurants will substitute shark or skate meat” posted on the Web, but I can’t find anything on either the USDA or FDA’s websites to support this. Granted, I haven’t looked very hard.
I think the most important lesson we can draw is that there’s a difference, in the U.S. at least, between what a restaurant can serve and what you can buy at the store. The product at the store has to be labeled with what’s in it. If it’s scallops, it’ll say “scallops”. If it’s skate, it had better say “skate”. Hence the qualifier “unscrupulous” in all the factoids.
I’d say buy your “scallops” at the grocery store, and that way you’ll be sure you’re getting “scallops”.
…and the reason I’m certain that a food label can’t say “scallops” when it’s really “skate” is not just because I have a lot of faith in the Federal Government, but because shellfish seems to have more rules about possible contamination (bacterial contamination, “red tides”, etc.) than red meat or poultry, because of its short storage time, so I seriously doubt whether the FDA would say “scallops” but really mean “…or skate”.
If this does happen, it is most likely to occur at small seafood markets and in places near the ocean where you get fishermen selling directly to the small markets and restaurants.
I did find this off the cuff reference about shark being used as a scallop substitute in this link for U of Washington Zoology curriculum:
In the manner this is used it could refer to “authentic” fake scallops, aka surimi.
There is fake crab meat, made with whitefish flavored by crab shells. I’ve had it, and in some uses it is just fine. It is a lot cheaper than crab. Sorry about the hijack, but couldn’t you just go to the local supermarket’s fish department and ask for fake scallops?
The rumour is here (Australia) as well, particularly as regards stir-fries in Asian joints. I doubt it. One way that I’d be able to tell with ones I bought myself is that scallops from the fishmonger come with coral (roe) attached. Is this not the case in the US?
I never heard the rumor about restaurants serving skate or shark and claiming it’s sea scallops.
However, Peter Benchley is probably responsible for MUCH of the concern that sea scallops in restaurants aren’t really scallops. In his novel “Jaws,” Matt Hooper is having lunch with Chief Brody’s wife (they’re having an affair), and Hooper agonizes over the menu. He WANTS to order scallops, but he tells Mrs. Brody, confidentially, that most restaurtants don’t serve real scallops, that most just take flounder and cut it up to look like scallops. Finally, he orders the scallops, takes one bite, and says, “I knew it. Flounder cut up with a cookie cutter.”
ARE there unscrupulous restaurants that do such things? Maybe, maybe not. I have no reason to think so, but am open to evidence.
But my hunch is, MILLIONS of people read Benchley’s “Jaws,” and many of them took Matt Hooper’s word for it.
Not with flounder.
It has a finfish-type white flaky flesh, like sole or perch, quite unlike the texture of scallops. If Hooper really does say it’s flounder, then either (a) Benchley is saying that Hooper may be a shark expert, but he knows nothing about cooking fish, or (b) Benchley knows nothing about cooking fish., or © Benchley had heard the factoid about some restaurants substituting something for scallops, and he thought it was flounder, not skate.
If you cut up a flounder fillet with a cookie cutter, the resultant circles would just fall apart as soon as they were cooked.
As some one who works in the seafood industry I can inform you that Europeans and Americans don’t eat the roe, which is a shame as it’s the beat bit. I get pissed off by European people who wan’t me to pull all the roes off and don’t want to pay for them.
Crumbed Scallop Bites are quite common here (sorry New Zealand). They are made from reconsituted fish with rather dubious scallop flavouring.
There are many different species of scallops, several of which are grown commercially right here (where I am that is), others which are harvested from the wild. A lot of different types of shellfish are eaten in different areas, here is just one list that goes over what’s out there (9 diff types of scallops mentioned). So you might be getting a different sized (but real) scallop after all. Unfortunately, I study marine life a lot more than I buy or eat it, so I can’t say which types of real/imitation scallop you do or don’t find. In case anyone was wondering, the imitation crab meat you get is minced pollock (or similar local fish) that is mixed with starch, sugar, and various other things - which in the end is called surimi, which can be fashioned into different shapes and sold as different products - read about that here.
-
-
- William Poundstone touches on this in one of his Big Secrets books. In the book, he checked a few locally available varieties and all were genuine. He noted that there were obvious visual differences between the real and the fake. - MC
-
I remember hearing the rumour when I was a very little kid. Five years old or so. So the rumor was around before Jaws.
One way to be sure you’re getting real scallops (at least if you’re buying them fresh is to get them with the orange ‘coral’(gonads) still attached.
I don’t know much about the scallop trade, but I’ve heard consistently that ratfish is often sold by some fishermen as ‘whitefish’ or some such. I don’t have an official cite, though, but it does seem reasonable in that ratfish is not exactly the most marketable name for a seafood item.
Yep. Snopes, about a year ago. You summed the thread up pretty well.
I signed up just to respond to this thread. I’m a fisherman, and I also worked as a foreman down at a fishing boat dock on Long Island for many years. Growing up as a kid, I always heard this story. Never thought much about it, because I could care less if I were eating real scallops, or sea skate/manta. A lot of crab sticks are made from pollock and jimmy crack corn. If it tastes good, what difference does it make?
HOWEVER! One year, a big manta ray swam into the fishing boat harbor and was living in there for quite some time. One of the boat mates caught it one day, pulled it aboard his boat, and started carving it up. I asked him what he was going to do with it, and he told me he planned on cutting up the wing meat to sell as scallops. Also, with the abundance of sea skates, and the fact that no one eats them over here otherwise, I’m sure it happens more than we know. Maybe not at grocery stores who likely purchase farm raised scallops, but I’m sure restaurants and local fish markets either get duped, or just willingly go along with the ruse. An untrained eye isn’t going to know the difference, and the taste is relatively similar when it is prepared as scallops would be prepared.
So you wanted proof. There it is. It does happen.