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Oyster Short Cake
One quart flour, three teaspoonfuls baking powder, one table-- spoonful butter, heaped, a little salt, enough milk or water to moisten well, roll out about half an inch thick and bake on a jelly tin; then spread a little melted butter on the top of this, then place another cake on and bake; when done, the top one can easily be removed, and after the oysters are ready put a layer of them on, then place the one removed on again and put more oysters and gravy on the top. One quart oysters, one cup water, one cup milk, one-half cup butter, and two tablespoonfuls flour; make this gravy and cook the oysters in it long enough to plump them; what is left place in a gravy bowl and add as needed to the cake.
A savory biscuit shortcake, built exactly like a strawberry one. Two points decide whether it works: the buttered seam between the layers, and how briefly the oysters sit in the sauce.
- The buttered seamThe melted butter between the two rounds of dough is what lets the top lift off cleanly after baking, giving you two tender interior faces rather than two crusts. The recipe asks for only "a little"; press the layers together lightly.
- A quart of flourRoughly 4 cups; a quart of flour was commonly reckoned at about a pound, more if unsifted. "Enough milk or water to moisten well" for that quantity is around 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups; add it gradually and stop when the dough just holds together.
- Leavening runs lightThree teaspoons of baking powder to 4 cups of flour is less than most modern biscuit recipes use. Period baking powders were single-acting and variable in strength; if yours is a standard double-acting tin, 4 teaspoons gives a better rise.
- Fat is sparse by designOne heaped tablespoon of butter to 4 cups of flour makes a lean, bread-like short cake meant to soak up gravy, not a rich biscuit. Rub it in cold and handle the dough as little as possible.
- Jelly tinA jelly cake tin is a shallow round layer pan, 8 or 9 inches. A rimmed sheet pan works equally well; cut the baked slab into squares and split them if you prefer individual servings.
- OvenNo temperature is given; ovens of this period had no reliable gauge. Bake as you would biscuits: 450F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the top is set and lightly colored.
- Plumping the oysters"Long enough to plump them" means one to two minutes in the barely simmering sauce, just until the edges ruffle and the flesh turns opaque. Anything approaching a quarter of an hour and they tighten into rubber and weep liquor into the gravy.
- The gravyCook the 2 tablespoons flour in the half cup butter first, then add the water and milk; the oyster liquor from the quart of shucked oysters can replace part of the water for more flavor. It will be a thin sauce, which is what you want for soaking the cake.
- YieldA quart of oysters and a quart of flour serves six to eight as a supper dish, with sauce left for the gravy bowl as the recipe intends.
Oyster shortcake is generally traced to the last decades of the nineteenth century, when rail transport and barrel packing had made shucked oysters a cheap staple far inland. The dish appears to borrow its whole structure from strawberry shortcake, which in the American sense means a split biscuit rather than the sponge cake of British usage; here the fruit and cream are simply replaced by oysters in a milk gravy. It suits the character of supper, the light evening meal after a heavy midday dinner, being a hot dish assembled from a biscuit dough mixed from scratch and oysters. Books of this period run to dozens of oyster preparations, from scallops to fritters to patties, a density that reflects just how ordinary and inexpensive the oyster was before the beds were fished out.