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Broiled Oysters on the Half Shell
Procure large oysters; open and drop in boiling water a few moments, then put each oyster in a half shell, with the juice, which has been retained. Put on a gridiron over a hot fire; season with butter, pepper and salt. Serve on the half shell.
A two-step method — a quick scald to firm the oyster, then a brief broil in its own shell with butter. The whole thing takes minutes, and the only real risk is overcooking.
- The hinge: keep both stages briefThe dip in boiling water should be a matter of ten to twenty seconds, just until the edges begin to ruffle, and the broiling two to three minutes more. An oyster held over heat for a quarter of an hour turns to rubber and weeps out its liquor.
- GridironA gridiron is a grate set over live coals. A charcoal or gas grill is the closest match; a broiler element with the shells 4 inches below, or a very hot cast-iron griddle, both work. The shells will scorch and that is expected.
- "Retain the juice"Shuck over a bowl so nothing is lost, then strain out shell fragments. The liquor is the seasoning; without it the dish is just hot butter.
- Choose the deeper shellEach oyster has one cupped valve and one flat. Keep the cupped one to hold the liquor and butter, and steady the shells on a bed of coarse salt or crumpled foil so they do not tip.
- "Large oysters"Most likely Eastern/Atlantic oysters, which were commonly sold by count and size grade. Any medium-to-large oyster in the shell will do; very small ones cook through in the scald alone and are better left raw or roasted whole.
- Butter and saltAbout a teaspoon of butter per oyster, added on the grill so it melts into the liquor rather than burning. Go very light on salt — oyster liquor is already saline.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Figure six per person as a first course, a dozen as a light main, and cook them in batches so they go to the table hot.
- SourcingBuy oysters live, with shells tightly closed or closing when tapped, and use them within a day or two of purchase. Discard any that gape and will not shut.
Oysters were the cheap protein of nineteenth-century American cities, sold by the barrel and the bushel, and cookbooks of the period routinely give a dozen or more ways to serve them — stewed, fried, scalloped, pickled, in patties, and broiled like this. Cooking them on the half shell over coals is one of the older methods, close kin to the shore roasts and oyster bakes of the Atlantic coast, and the preliminary scald here, for which the recipe itself gives no reason, may well have been meant to firm the flesh so the oyster does not shrink away and dry out in the fierce heat of the gridiron. That the book assumes a reader with both a live coal fire and a barrel-cheap supply of large oysters is itself suggestive of the recipe's date. The American oyster is often said to have shifted from staple to delicacy as over-harvesting and pollution took their toll, and recipes of this abundance grew scarcer.