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Boiled Oysters
Wash shell-oysters perfectly clean, place in a small willow basket, drop in a kettle of boiling water, and when shells open, lift basket, and serve oysters on the half shell.
A steaming method reduced to one sentence. The whole recipe hinges on pulling the oysters the moment the shells crack open — past that they tighten and dry out.
- The willow basketAny wire or bamboo steamer insert, a deep-fry basket, or even a colander that clears the water line does the job. The point of the basket is that all the oysters come out at once, before the slower ones catch up.
- TimingIn a hard boil, shells generally begin gaping in around 3 minutes and most are open by about 5. Take them out as they open rather than waiting for the last stubborn one; overcooked oysters turn rubbery.
- Steam rather than submergeSitting the basket above an inch or two of boiling water gives the same result and keeps the oyster liquor in the shell instead of diluting it into the kettle. The liquor is most of the flavor here.
- Buying live oystersShells should be tightly shut, or should close when tapped. Any that gape before cooking are dead and go in the bin; any that refuse to open after cooking also get discarded.
- Cleaning"Perfectly clean" means scrubbing the shells under cold running water with a stiff brush — grit on the outside ends up in the shell once it opens. Keep them cold until they go into the pot.
- ServingLoosen the muscle from the flat top shell with a short knife, discard that half, and serve in the deep shell with its juices. Melted butter, pepper, lemon, or a little vinegar suit them.
- YieldThe book gives none. Reckon on six oysters a head as a first course, a dozen as a light main dish, and serve on a bed of rock salt or crushed ice to keep the shells from tipping.
Buckeye Cookery was compiled in Minnesota and Ohio in the late 1870s, well inland, and its shell-fish chapter reflects the railroad and the ice car: by then barrels of Chesapeake and Long Island oysters were reaching the Midwest cheaply, and oysters were widely eaten rather than treated as a luxury. Nineteenth-century American cooks ate them in quantity — raw, roasted in the shell, fried, scalloped, in soups and stuffings — and "oyster saloons" were fixtures of inland towns. The instruction to serve them on the half shell shows the recipe is aiming at the flavor of the oyster itself rather than at sauce or batter.