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Panned Oysters
Cut stale bread in thin slices, then round them, removing all. crust. Make them to fit patty-pans; toast them, butter, and place in pans. Moisten with three or four tea-spoons of oyster liquor; then place on the toast a layer of oysters, sprinkle with pepper, and put on top a small piece of butter; place pans in a baking pan and put in oven, covering with a tin lid, or if not large enough, another pan to keep in the steam and flavor; have a quick oven, and when cooked seven or eight minutes, until "ruffled," remove cover and sprinkle with salt; replace cover and cook one minute longer. Serve in the patty-pans. This is delicious.
A straightforward late-nineteenth-century oyster dish that depends entirely on not overcooking. The instructions are sound; the only real translation needed is oven heat, pan size and a sense of quantity.
- The hinge: "ruffled"Oysters are done the moment their edges curl and the flesh firms — that is the whole signal, and the recipe's seven or eight minutes assumes a hot oven and small pans. Past that point they tighten and turn rubbery, so check at five minutes rather than trusting the clock.
- A quick ovenUsually taken to mean roughly 400–450°F. The high heat is deliberate: it sets the oysters fast before the toast underneath turns to pulp.
- Patty-pansThese are small individual tins, roughly the size of a large muffin cup or a shallow 3–4 inch tartlet mould. Ramekins work, though metal heats faster and matches the original intent better.
- Oyster liquorThe liquid in the shell or in the container of shucked oysters. Strain it through a fine sieve or a cloth to catch shell grit before spooning it over the toast.
- Salt at the endThe recipe gives no reason for the late salting. Oyster liquor is already saline, and salt draws water out of oysters, so adding it at the end may season the surface without shrinking them.
- QuantityThe book gives none. Figure four to six medium shucked oysters per patty-pan, and one round of toast each; a pint of shucked oysters will fill six to eight pans as a first course.
- The tin lidAny tight cover works — an inverted sheet pan or foil crimped over the whole baking pan. Trapping the steam is what cooks the oysters through in a hot oven without drying the tops.
- BreadStale bread is specified, probably because it slices thin and holds up better under the liquor. Use a firm day-old white loaf, cut about a quarter inch thick and toasted well on both sides.
Oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel through most of the nineteenth century, which is why a Midwestern household book like Buckeye Cookery (first published in Ohio in 1877 as Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping) can afford to give shellfish attention far from any coast. "Panned" here seems to mean simply cooked in a pan in the oven rather than stewed or fried, and the toast-and-patty-pan presentation belongs to the era's fondness for individual servings. The Atlantic beds that supplied this trade were fished hard through the same decades, and by the early twentieth century oysters had shifted from everyday food toward the luxury they are now hem almalmost casually, are a fair record of how plentiful they once were.