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Oyster Omelet
Add to a half cup of cream six eggs beaten very light, season with pepper and salt, and pour into a frying-pan with a table-spoon of butter; drop in a dozen large oysters cut in halves, or chopped fine with parsley, and fry until a light brown. Double it over, and serve immediately. - Mrs. T. B. Johnson, Tuscumbia.
A large, plain omelet built on cream rather than water or milk, with raw oysters folded in as it sets. The whole thing takes under five minutes once the pan is hot.
- Drain the oysters firstShucked oysters carry a good deal of liquor, and a dozen of them will thin the egg into scrambled curds if tipped in wet. Lift them out with a fork, pat them on a towel, and save the liquor for a sauce or chowder.
- Two minutes, no moreOysters need only to firm and ruffle at the edges. They are in the pan for as long as the eggs take to set, which is the correct amount of time; anything longer and they turn to rubber.
- Scale of the thingSix eggs and half a cup of cream is a large omelet by modern habit. Use a 10- to 12-inch pan or it will not fold, and count on three to four servings.
- "Fry until a light brown"This receipt asks for a browned exterior. If you prefer a French-style omelet, keep the heat moderate and pull it while the surface is still glossy; the residual heat will finish it after folding.
- More butter than a tablespoonOne tablespoon in a 12-inch pan is thin coverage for a rich egg mixture. Two is safer unless the pan is well seasoned or nonstick.
- Cut, do not chopThe recipe offers halved or finely chopped oysters. Halved gives you distinct bites; chopped with parsley spreads the flavour through and suits a thinner omelet that will fold more neatly.
- Salt lightlyOysters bring their own salinity. Season the eggs with a restrained hand and correct at the table.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio in 1876, well inland, and the confidence with which it handles oysters is a reminder of how far the trade reached once the railroads did. Barrels of Chesapeake and Gulf oysters moved north and west packed in ice through the cold months, and by the 1870s an oyster supper was as much a Midwestern institution as a coastal one; oyster cellars and saloons operated in towns hundreds of miles from salt water. Like much of Buckeye Cookery, this receipt is signed with a contributor's name and town, in this case simply "Tuscumbia," which shows the community-cookbook method the compilers used: soliciting household recipes from women across a wide correspondence network rather than writing them in one voice.