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Angels on Horseback
Cut some little round pieces of bread about a quarter of an inch thick, and two inches in diameter. Fry them in clarified butter to a golden brown, then spread over them a thin coating of anchovy paste, and on this place a little slice of crisply fried bacon. On the bacon put a bearded oyster which has been simply warmed in the oven between two plates with a little butter and its liquor, and seasoned with a tiny dust of nutmeg. Then sprinkle over the top a little chopped parsley, and dish the crusts up in a row. Pour the oyster liquor round them, and serve for a savoury or a breakfast dish. Probable cost, 3d. each.
A savoury from the era when oysters were cheap and dinner ended with something salty rather than sweet. The whole thing stands or falls on how briefly the oysters see heat.
- The hinge: barely warm the oystersCassell's method — two plates, a little butter and the oysters' own liquor, warmed in the oven — exists to keep them plump. Give them two or three minutes, until the edges just ruffle and the flesh firms; a full ten minutes turns them to erasers. Anyone pregnant, immune-compromised or elderly should have oysters cooked through rather than merely warmed.
- "Bearded"The beard is the dark frill of gill tissue along one edge of a shucked oyster. Pinch or trim it away; it is edible but stringy. Shop-shucked oysters in a tub are usually already trimmed.
- Clarified butterButter with the milk solids removed, so it fries the bread golden without burning. Melt unsalted butter gently, skim the foam, pour off the clear fat and leave the milky sediment behind. Ghee works identically.
- Oven temperatureThe original names none. Around 300F is right for the plate method — enough to warm the butter and liquor, not enough to poach the oysters hard.
- Anchovy pasteStill sold in tubes; Gentleman's Relish is the same idea with spice. It is very salty, so use it thinly as instructed and go easy on any extra seasoning. Two or three mashed anchovy fillets will substitute.
- The baconVictorian breakfast bacon was generally dry-cured, and recipes of the period usually call for thin rashers. Use streaky or a thin-cut rasher, fried until genuinely crisp — limp bacon collapses under the oyster and the croute goes soggy.
- Reserve the liquorStrain the buttery liquor from the plates and spoon it round the base of the croutes rather than over them, or the fried bread softens before it reaches the table.
- Yield and servingCount two or three per person as a savoury, four as a breakfast or light supper dish. Assemble at the last moment; they do not hold.
- "3d. each"Threepence in pre-decimal British currency, at a time when oysters were still a cheap ingredient. The price signals how ordinary an ingredient this once was.
The name belongs to a small family of Victorian and Edwardian savouries built on the same joke: a morsel wrapped in or perched on bacon, "on horseback." Angels are oysters; devils, by the usual telling, are prunes or dates, the heat of the name coming from cayenne or the dark fruit. Both belong to the savoury course, a distinctly British institution in which a hot, salty, anchovy-or-cheese mouthful followed the sweet and preceded the port. Cassell's places the dish here as much for breakfast as for dinner, which reflects the reality of nineteenth-century oyster supply: the Thames estuary and the Essex and Kentish beds were still yielding cheaply enough that oysters turned up in pies, in beefsteak puddings and in sauces, and for much of the century they were widely affordable rather than a luxury. The decline of those fisheries later in the century, generally attributed to overfishing and disease, is why a recipe costing threepence a piece now reads as an extravagance.