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Scalloped Oysters
Drain the oysters; butter the dish in which you expect to bake them; scatter cracker crumbs, well seasoned with pepper and salt; then drop in a few pieces of butter, next a layer of oysters, then a layer of cracker crumbs, again bits of butter; continue this until the dish is filled the last layer should be crackers. Strain the oyster liquor-pour on the top.- Mrs. E. Ferguson.
CHAPTER VIII.
A three-ingredient dish that lives or dies on restraint: too much liquid and it turns to soup, too many layers and the middle steams instead of browning. The original assumes you know your oven, so a few numbers help.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is browned and the edges bubble. Longer than that and the oysters shrink and toughen — they need only enough heat to plump and firm.
- Two layers, not four"Continue this until the dish is filled" invites a deep casserole, but scalloped oysters are best in a shallow dish with two oyster layers between three of crumbs. A deep one leaves the centre pale and watery.
- Cracker crumbsThe period cracker was usually a plain soda or water cracker, closer to today's oyster crackers or unsalted saltines than to a seasoned crumb. Crush coarsely, not to dust; some texture is the point. If using salted crackers, cut back the added salt sharply.
- The liquor is the trapStrain it, but do not pour on all of it. Two to four tablespoons over a shallow dish is enough; a full cup of oyster liquor plus the water the oysters release will flood the crumbs. Discard the rest or save it for a chowder.
- Butter"A few pieces" per layer works out to roughly 4 to 6 tablespoons total for a quart of oysters. It should be dotted, not melted and poured, so it bastes the crumbs as it goes.
- Quantity and yieldA quart of shucked oysters (about two 16-oz containers) in a 9-inch dish serves six as a side, four as a main. Drain them in a sieve rather than pressing, and pick over for bits of shell.
- Buying oystersShucked oysters sold in liquor are the intended product and still sold refrigerated in tubs. Standards or selects are the right size; very large oysters should be cut in half or they will not cook through in the time the crumbs need to brown.
Scalloped oysters were one of the most common ways an American household ate oysters in the nineteenth century, and regional cookbooks of the era often carry a version — in community and subscription volumes like this one, frequently under a contributor's name. The dish depends on two things being cheap: oysters, which were dredged in enormous quantities from Chesapeake Bay and the Long Island and New England shores and shipped inland by rail in barrels and tins, and factory crackers, which over the course of the century became a staple pantry item rather than something baked at home. The name comes from the scallop shell — food originally cooked and served in one — and by this period had come to mean any dish layered with crumbs and butter and baked. Its survival on American holiday tables, particularly at Thanksgiving and Christmas in the Midwest and upper South, is generally traced to the fact that shipped oysters were a winter luxury: the season and the celebration coincided.