Drain large oysters; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Try out a few slices of bacon in a frying-pan; remove the bacon. Roll the oysters in fine bread-crumbs and sauté until brown on both sides. Place on hot buttered toast; sprinkle with lemon-juice and garnish with olives.
November 25 — No. 25
French
A short, direct recipe: bacon fat, crumbed oysters, buttered toast. The only thing that can spoil it is time in the pan.
- The hinge — cook them fastShucked oysters need roughly 60–90 seconds a side over medium-high heat, just long enough to brown the crumbs and firm the edges. Any longer and they shrink and turn rubbery, releasing liquor that softens the coating.
- "Try out" the baconThis means render it slowly until the fat runs and the slices crisp. Three or four slices give enough fat for a dozen oysters; save the bacon to eat alongside or crumble over the toast.
- Dry the oysters firstDrain in a sieve, then blot with paper towel before salting. Crumbs will not stick to wet oysters, and surface water makes the fat spit.
- Fine bread-crumbsIn recipes of this kind the phrase generally indicates dry crumbs rubbed through a sieve, closer to modern plain dried breadcrumbs than to coarse panko. The recipe crumbs the oysters directly; if you want a coating that holds better, dip the seasoned oysters in beaten egg or a little milk first.
- Oyster sizeThe recipe specifies only 'large oysters', which would be bought shucked, commonly by the pint. Depending on grade, a pint of large shucked oysters runs to roughly a dozen or so.
- Fat depthThis is a sauté, not a fry — a film of bacon fat in the pan, no more. If the rendered bacon leaves too little, top up with butter or a neutral oil; butter alone will darken before the crumbs set.
- OlivesThe recipe leaves the type unspecified; brined green olives, stoned and halved, suit the dish. Their salt and acid stand in for a sauce, as does the lemon juice, so season the oysters lightly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. On a dozen or so oysters it will stretch to about four rounds of buttered toast as a first course, or two as a light supper.
The name simply places the dish in Toulon, the naval port on the French Mediterranean, and reflects what may well have been a habit in American cookbooks of the period: attaching a French place-name to a straightforward preparation to lend it standing on a menu. Fried and sautéed oysters on toast were genuinely everyday food in the United States at the time — oysters were cheap, plentiful and shipped inland on ice by rail, and books of this period run to dozens of oyster recipes where a modern collection might have two. A day-by-day book like this one, giving a dish for every date of the year with a nationality attached, was written for the housekeeper who wanted variety without new equipment; the "French" element here amounts to little more than the bacon fat, the lemon and the olives.