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Oysters in the Pan
Mince a small onion finely, and put it into a stewpan with two ounces of fresh butter, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, and a little pepper and salt. Steam until the onion is tender, then add a quarter of a pint of new milk or cream and a dozen fresh oysters. Let these get quite hot, then turn them with the sauce into a buttered baking-dish, strew finely-grated bread-crumbs thickly over, and put them into a quick oven until the crumbs are lightly browned. Time, altogether, about half an hour. Probable cost of oysters, 1s. 6d. to 3s. per dozen. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A simple oyster gratin, and the whole thing hinges on how briefly the oysters spend in the pan. Everything else is a herb butter and a handful of crumbs.
- Do not cook the oysters twice"Let these get quite hot" means barely a minute in the warm milk, just until the edges ruffle. They will finish in the oven, and an oyster that has been simmered and then baked is rubbery.
- A quick oven425-450F. The crumbs should colour in 8-10 minutes; the recipe's "about half an hour" counts the onion sweating, the sauce and the baking together.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 5 fl oz -- a generous half cup. Cream gives a sauce that clings to the crumbs; milk alone will be thin and may separate in a hot oven.
- New milkFresh unskimmed milk, not standardised in fat content as modern whole milk is. Whole milk with a spoonful of cream is the nearest equivalent.
- "Steam until the onion is tender"Cover the pan and cook the onion gently in the butter over low heat without browning, 8-10 minutes. This is sweating, not steaming over water.
- Keep the oyster liquorIf you shuck the oysters yourself, strain the liquor into the sauce; the recipe does not mention it, but it is salty, so season cautiously if you add it.
- CrumbsDry, finely grated crumbs from stale bread, not the soft fresh sort, and strewn thickly. Fresh crumbs go pasty in the sauce rather than crisping.
- YieldA dozen oysters for three or four people is a Victorian savoury course, not a main dish. Reckon on three or four dozen and a proportionally larger sauce if it is to be supper for four.
Cassell's belongs to the decades when oysters were still cheap enough to be bulked out with breadcrumbs -- the 1s. 6d. to 3s. a dozen quoted here was within reach of a middle-class household. Dishes of this kind, oysters warmed in a herbed cream and browned under crumbs, were generally served as a hot savoury or a light entrée rather than a centrepiece, often in scallop shells, which is where the name "scalloped" for any crumb-topped gratin is usually traced. The English oyster fishery collapsed in the decades after this book under overfishing, pollution and disease, with typhoid scares doing their share of the damage.