Boil large oysters in their liquor; season with salt, pepper and curry-powder. Let come to a boil; then drain, and spread the oysters with highly seasoned minced chicken. Dip them in a seasoned egg batter and fry in deep hot lard to a golden brown. Serve hot, garnished with fried parsley and lemon slices.
A composite fritter: oysters poached in their own liquor, wrapped in seasoned chicken forcemeat, battered and deep-fried. The original assumes you know what an oyster looks like when it is done, which is the one thing worth getting right.
- Do not boil the oysters"Let come to a boil" will shrink and toughen them. Bring the liquor to a bare simmer and pull the oysters the moment their edges ruffle, 1 to 2 minutes, then drain and cool before coating.
- Curry-powder of the periodCommercial curry powders of this era were generally turmeric-heavy and mild by modern standards, though blends varied; nothing like a garam masala. Try about 1/2 teaspoon per pint of oysters, bloomed in the hot liquor rather than added raw at the end.
- The minced chickenThis is a forcemeat, not a garnish. Cooked chicken minced fine and bound with a little butter or thick bechamel will hold on the oyster; plain dry mince slides off in the fryer. Chill the coated oysters 20 minutes so the layer sets before battering.
- Egg batterBeaten egg thinned with a spoonful of milk or water and seasoned with salt and pepper will do. A roll in fine crumbs afterwards is not in the original but gives a firmer, more reliably golden crust.
- Deep hot lardLard fries beautifully and is still sold; any neutral fat works. The target is 375F. Below that the batter absorbs fat, above it the coating colours before the chicken layer heats through. Fry in small batches, about 2 minutes, until golden.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf or curly parsley, dried thoroughly, dropped into the same fat for 10 to 15 seconds. Wet parsley spits violently in deep fat, so blot it well and stand back.
- YieldA pint of shucked large oysters gives roughly 12 to 16 fritters, which serves four as a first course.
The "of all nations" framing in these turn-of-the-century American day-books was often aspirational: a familiar dish took on a national label whenever a recognisably foreign seasoning was added, and curry powder alone was enough to make an oyster "Hindoo" or "Indian." Curry powder had been sold ready-blended in Britain since the late eighteenth century and by 1900 was a standard grocery item in America too, used freely in chafing-dish cookery, croquettes and fritters that had no connection to any Indian kitchen. The dish itself belongs squarely to the American oyster boom of the period, when Chesapeake and Long Island oysters were cheap enough to be fried by the dozen; and whatever else might be said of the combination, the lard is the genuinely disqualifying element.