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Oyster Roll
Cut a round piece, say six inches across, from the top of a wellbaked round loaf of bread, remove the inside from the loaf, leaving crust half an inch thick; make a rich oyster stew, and put in the loaf first a layer of it, then of bread-crumbs, then oysters, and so on; place cover over the top, glaze the loaf with the beaten yolk of an egg, and place in oven for a few moments. Serve very hot.
A hollowed loaf filled with oyster stew — essentially a Victorian bread bowl, served whole and cut at the table. The original assumes you know how to make an oyster stew, so most of the work is in the parts left unwritten.
- The hinge: barely cook the oystersShucked oysters need only to plump and curl at the edges, about two minutes in the hot milk or cream, and they will cook further inside the loaf in the oven. Anything approaching a simmer for longer turns them tough and shrunken.
- What "a rich oyster stew" meantBroadly, oysters heated in their own liquor with milk or cream and a good lump of butter, seasoned with salt and pepper; mace turns up in some period oyster dishes but is not a given. Thickening practice varied — some nineteenth-century stews use flour or cracker crumbs — and here the bread will absorb a good deal of the liquid in any case.
- Choosing the loafA firm round country loaf or a sturdy boule works; soft supermarket sandwich bread collapses. Leave the crust a full half inch thick as directed, and dry the shell in a low oven for ten minutes before filling so it does not go to paste.
- The bread-crumbsThe recipe does not say which crumbs. The crumb you have just scooped out, torn or coarsely crumbed and perhaps toasted a little, is the obvious candidate, and coarse crumbs will absorb liquor between the layers better than the fine dried crumbs sold for breading.
- Drain before fillingLift the oysters out with a slotted spoon and spoon in only enough of the liquid to moisten each layer. A loaf flooded with stew leaks through the base within minutes.
- Oven and time"A few moments" means hot and brief. The recipe gives no temperature; a hot oven, around 425F, for only a few minutes should be enough to set the egg glaze and heat the loaf through. Longer and the oysters keep cooking.
- The glazeBeat the yolk with a teaspoon of water or cream and brush the top crust and lid. It gives the gloss the recipe is after; without the thinning it streaks.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, and the six inches is the width of the lid cut from the top, so the loaf itself is larger than that. A loaf of that size with roughly a quart of shucked oysters would serve about four as a supper dish. Carry it to the table whole and cut into wedges, or serve by the spoonful with a piece of the crust.
Filling a hollowed loaf and returning it to the oven is a very old economy — a similar idea underlies the French *pain farci* and the New Orleans oyster loaf. Its presence in *Buckeye Cookery* (first published in Ohio in 1877) is a reminder of how thoroughly the railroads had changed inland eating: iced and canned oysters moved from Chesapeake and Gulf beds to Midwestern towns, and oysters became cheap enough that a book aimed at practical farmhouse cooks could give them a whole section.