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Escaloped Oysters
Take crushed crackers, not too fine; drain liquor from a quart of oysters and carefully remove all bits of shell, butter a deep dish or pan, cover the bottom with crackers, put in a layer of oysters seasoned with salt and pepper and bits of butter in plenty, then a layer of crackers, then oysters, and so on until dish is full, finishing with the crackers covered with bits of butter; pour over the whole the oyster-liquor added to one pint of boiling water (boiled and skimmed), place in a hot oven, bake half an hour, add another pint of hot water, or half pint water and half pint of milk, in which a small lump of butter has been melted; bake another half hour, and, to prevent browning too much, cover with a tin or sheet-iron lid. All bread-crumbs, or a mixture of crackers and bread-crumbs may be used when more convenient. As the amount of liquor in oysters varies, and the proportion of crackers or breadcrumbs to the oysters also varies, the quantity of water must be Some increased or diminished according to judgment and taste. prefer to cook half the time given above. Boiled macaroni may be used in place of cracker-crumbs.
Or, cover the bottom of a well-buttered baking dish with a layer of crumbs, and wet these with the cream or milk, one-haif cup put on spoon by spoon, salt and pepper, and add bits of butter; add one quart of oysters and liquor, pepper and bits of butter. Then cover thickly with crumbs and on them place more pieces of butter. Place in oven and cover-this is very important, as the flavor is thereby not allowed to escape-and bake till the juice bubbles up, from half to three-quarters of an hour. Remove cover and brown in upper part of oven for a few minutes, not long. Serve in dish in which it was baked.
A quart of shucked oysters and a box of crackers, layered and baked. The two methods given differ sharply in length, and the second one is the better guide.
- Bake time is the hingeA full hour in the oven, as the first method directs, will shrink the oysters to rubber. The book's own aside that "some prefer to cook half the time" is the sound advice, and the second method's instruction to bake until the juice bubbles up, 30 to 45 minutes, is better still. The oysters should be just plumped and their edges curled.
- A hot ovenTake that as roughly 400F, bearing in mind the book gives no temperatures and 'hot' covered a wide range. The dish wants heat brisk enough to set the custardy liquid and bubble the juices before the oysters overcook.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters sold by volume: a quart is roughly 2 lb of meats, somewhere in the region of three to four dozen medium ones depending on grade, and modern tubs come with their liquor. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve or cheesecloth rather than picking for shell fragments.
- CrackersPlain soda crackers or oyster crackers, crushed coarse, not cracker meal. Fine crumbs turn to paste in the liquid. Salted tops mean you should hold back on the seasoning salt.
- The liquid, and how muchThe first method's pint of boiling water followed by a second pint is a great deal of liquid, and the text itself says the quantity of water must be increased or diminished according to judgment and taste. Better to follow the second version: the oyster liquor plus about half a cup of cream or milk, added spoon by spoon over the crumb base. The dish should be moist, not soupy.
- A tin or sheet-iron lidFoil, or the dish's own lid. Covering traps the steam and keeps the top from scorching before the middle is hot; uncover only for the last few minutes of browning.
- Never three layers of crumbsLayers of crumbs -- Two thin layers of crumbs, one under and one over, is the safer approach; a middle layer of crackers can go sodden, and the second method here drops it.
- YieldA quart of oysters makes a generous main course for four, or a side dish for six to eight.
Escalloped oysters belong to the era when Chesapeake and Gulf oysters travelled inland by rail in barrels and cans, cheap enough that a Midwestern household could bake a quart of them into a supper dish. Buckeye Cookery (Minneapolis, 1877, drawing on Ohio housekeepers' contributions) devotes a full shell-fish section to them, which suggests, though the book itself does not say so, how thoroughly the railroads had reached Ohio kitchens. The word escallop is the old form of scallop, and is traditionally said to have referred to cooking in a scallop shell; by the nineteenth century it had come to mean any dish baked in a shallow vessel with crumbs and a sauce, the shell long forgotten. The habit of layering oysters with crackers rather than a flour-thickened sauce is often described as an American one, and the double set of instructions here, with its running commentary on how much water to add, reads exactly like two contributors' versions set down one after the other rather than a single tested recipe.