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Broiled Oysters (Drain select oysters)
Drain select oysters in a colander. Dip each oyster into melted butter, to prevent sticking, and then place upon a wire gridiron. Broil very carefully over a good fire. When well browned on both sides, season with salt, pepper, and a generous quantity of butter, and lay on hot buttered toast, just a little moistened with hot water. These are very nice served on broiled beefsteak; not good unless served very hot.
A two-minute dish that depends almost entirely on heat and dryness. Everything here hinges on getting the oysters as dry as possible and the fire as hot as possible.
- The hinge: dry oysters, hot fireOysters shed liquor the moment they warm, and wet oysters steam rather than brown. Drain them in the colander, then blot them on a towel before the butter, and do not put them over the fire until it is fully hot.
- "Select" oystersA trade grade, not a compliment: shucked oysters sorted by size, with selects a medium tier. Any large shucked oyster works; small ones overcook before they colour.
- Timing"Broil very carefully" means about a minute a side. The edges curl and the flesh firms almost immediately; past three minutes total they tighten into rubber.
- Gridiron over a good fireA fine-wire grill over live coals. A modern equivalent is a preheated cast-iron grill pan or a broiler element with the pan set 3-4 inches beneath it, preheated until the pan smokes.
- Cooking them without losing themOysters shrink and slip through a wire grid. Use a fine-mesh grill basket, or lay them on a preheated cast-iron pan, which also gives better browning than open wire.
- The toastThe splash of hot water presumably softens stiff toast so it takes up the oyster juices instead of shattering. With modern soft bread, use a scant teaspoon per slice or skip it.
- Quantity and yieldNo amount is given. Reckon about six oysters and one slice of toast per person as a first course; a pint of selects will serve four or so.
- Serving hotThe instruction to serve very hot is not decorative. Broiled oysters go flabby as they cool, so cook them last and plate them straight from the fire.
Broiled oysters belong to the era when American oysters were cheap, abundant and eaten daily rather than treated as a luxury. Beds along the Chesapeake and the coasts of New York and New England supplied shucked oysters by the barrel to inland cities by rail through the second half of the nineteenth century, which is why a household cookbook of the period can assume the reader knows what a "select" is. The suggestion of serving them on broiled beefsteak is often connected to the same instinct that is said to have produced carpetbag steak and the oyster-stuffed roast: oysters were the ordinary cook's way of enriching beef, playing the role a sauce or a pat of compound butter plays now. Overfishing and pollution brought a long decline in many of those beds, and with them the casual, by-the-quart cookery this recipe takes for granted.