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To Fry Oysters
Wash them and dry on a napkin; dip in beaten egg, and then in the cracker crumbs; repeat this once. Add pepper and salt to taste, and fry in butter and lard.
A terse late-Victorian formula that assumes you know what a properly hot pan looks like. The double breading is the point, and the frying is faster than most people expect.
- The hinge: dry oystersShucked oysters carry a lot of liquor, and wet oysters shed their coating in the fat. Drain them well and blot on paper towels until the surface looks matte before the first dip in egg.
- Cracker crumbsIn American kitchens of the period this usually meant plain soda or hard water crackers crushed fine, rather than seasoned breadcrumbs. Saltines rolled coarse are the closest match; being saltier and slightly richer than dry breadcrumbs they tend to colour quickly, so watch the crust.
- Double coating"Repeat this once" means egg, crumbs, egg, crumbs. Let the oysters rest five to ten minutes on a rack between the second coat and the pan so the crust sets and stays on.
- Butter and lardThe mixture gives lard's higher smoke point with butter's flavor. Half and half works; butter alone will brown and burn before the crust colors. Neutral oil with a spoonful of butter is a reasonable substitute.
- Fat depth and heatShallow frying, roughly a quarter inch of fat, over a moderately brisk heat; the recipe specifies neither. With butter in the pan the fat will brown before it reaches the 365-375F usual for deep frying, so work at the lower end and judge by the colour of the crust. Fry in batches so the pan does not cool, and turn once.
- TimeOne to two minutes a side, until the crust is deep gold. Oysters are done the moment the edges ruffle; longer and they tighten into rubber, which is the usual fault with fried oysters.
- YieldA pint of shucked oysters, roughly 20-25 medium, serves three or four as a course. Figure one egg and about a cup of crumbs per pint.
- ServingServe immediately, with lemon and cayenne, or a sharp sauce if you like one. They do not hold; a covered dish steams the crust soft within minutes.
Fried oysters belong to the era when oysters were cheap protein rather than a luxury. Chesapeake and New York beds supplied barrels of shucked oysters to inland cities by rail and ice through the second half of the nineteenth century, and household books of the 1890s and 1900s routinely give a dozen or more oyster recipes -- fried, scalloped, stewed, in patties, on toast. The cracker-crumb crust is often said to be an American touch: soda crackers were a pantry staple and rolled finer and drier than bread, and the same coating turns up on fried fish, veal cutlets and croquettes throughout the period. Frying in a butter-and-lard blend was ordinary practice; commercial vegetable shortening arrived with Crisco in 1911, but lard remained common in American kitchens well beyond that.