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Oysters, Fried
Fried oysters are generally used to garnish fish, either boiled or fried, and large oysters are the best for the purpose. Open the oysters, and simmer them for two minutes in their own liquor, dry them in a cloth, beard them, and dip them in a frying batter made as follows. Mix six ounces of flour very smoothly with the yolk of an egg, an ounce of clarified butter, and a quarter of a pint of lukewarm water, beat the mixture until it is quite smooth, then add a pinch of salt, and let the batter stand in a cool place for a couple of hours. Stir in briskly the well-whisked whites of two eggs, dip the oysters in separately, drop them into boiling fat, and fry them until they are crisp and brown. Drain them on a cloth, and serve very hot. Time to fry the oysters, seven or eight minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 3s. per dozen.
A straightforward tempura-style batter with one figure that must be ignored: the frying time. Everything else scales cleanly to a modern kitchen.
- Seven or eight minutes is wrongBattered oysters in fat at 350-375F are crisp and golden in 60-90 seconds, two minutes at the outside. Held for seven minutes they shrink to grey rubber inside a burnt shell. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop below temperature.
- The pre-simmerTwo minutes in their own liquor firms the oysters so they hold their shape in the batter and shed water that would otherwise steam it soft. Do not extend it, and drain and dry them thoroughly before dipping or the batter will slide off.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frill of gill tissue around the edge. Pinch or snip it away after the simmer, when it comes off cleanly. It is chewy and traps grit.
- Imperial measuresSix ounces of flour is about 1 1/3 cups. A quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, a scant 2/3 US cup. Clarified butter is butter melted and the milk solids skimmed and poured off; the ounce called for is about two tablespoons, and two tablespoons of neutral oil does the same job here.
- Resting the batterThe two-hour rest hydrates the flour and slackens the gluten, giving a lighter crust. The whisked whites go in at the last moment and will deflate if the batter sits after that, so fry immediately.
- Frying fatThe original says only 'boiling fat', which in a kitchen of this period would most likely have been dripping or lard. Any fat with a smoke point above 400F works. Drain on a rack rather than the specified cloth; cloth traps steam and softens the crust.
- Yield and servingThe batter should stretch to a couple of dozen oysters or so, far more than a garnish needs. As written these are meant to ring a platter of boiled turbot or fried sole, but they stand alone as a first course with lemon and cayenne.
- The price note1s. 6d. to 3s. per dozen is Victorian money, and on its own it tells you little more than that oysters were a normal item of commerce priced by the dozen. Modern shucked oysters are sold by the pint or the half-pint; allow a dozen large ones per two people as a starter.
The entry opens by treating fried oysters as a garnish for boiled or fried fish rather than as a dish in their own right, and the oyster beds of Whitstable, Colchester and the Firth of Forth were substantial suppliers to the nineteenth-century British market. The batter is a standard English frying batter of the period: flour slackened with water, enriched with a yolk and butter, and lightened by folding in whipped whites at the last moment. By the end of the century overfishing and disease in the native beds had pushed prices up, and the oyster's reputation shifted towards luxury, which is part of why a recipe using fried oysters as decoration reads strangely now.