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Oysters, Omelet Of
Mince well a dozen fried oysters. Mix with them half a dozen well-beaten eggs; season the mixture with a small pinch of salt, a salt-spoonful of white pepper, and the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, and fry the omelet in the usual way (see OMELET). Or, beat half a dozen eggs lightly, and fry them in hot fat until they are delicately set. Put three table-spoonfuls of oyster sauce into the centre, fold the omelet over, and serve on a hot dish. Time, five or six minutes to fry the omelet. Sufficient for two or three persons. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
Two versions of the same idea: oysters folded through the egg, or oyster sauce spooned into the middle. The second is the better dish, provided you understand what Cassell means by oyster sauce.
- Oyster sauce is not the bottled kindIn an English book of this period, oyster sauce means a white sauce — butter, flour, milk or cream, let down with the strained oyster liquor and finished with poached, bearded oysters. Chinese bottled oyster sauce is a different product and will overwhelm the eggs.
- A saltspoonfulAbout a quarter of a teaspoon. The salt is deliberately light because both fried oysters and their liquor carry plenty of their own.
- An eighth of a nutmegRoughly a quarter teaspoon freshly grated, which is assertive against six eggs. Start with half that and taste the raw mixture on a fried scrap if you are unsure.
- The frying timeFive or six minutes suits the heavier pans and slower stoves of the period. In a modern non-stick pan over medium-high heat a six-egg omelet sets in two to three minutes, and the eggs should still be glossy where they fold.
- Split the eggs between two pansSix eggs in one pan gives a thick, slow-setting slab. Two three-egg omelets, each folded over half the sauce, cook faster and serve better.
- Preparing the oystersFor the first version, drain and beard the oysters, dry them, flour lightly and fry hard for under a minute a side. Any longer and they tighten into rubber inside the omelet, where they get a second cooking.
- Save the liquorStrain the oyster liquor through muslin and use it in the sauce or to slacken the beaten eggs by a spoonful. Discarding it throws away most of the flavour you paid for.
- Yield and costTwo or three servings as written, closer to two as a main course. The probable cost is given as 2s. 6d. — half a crown — for the whole dish.
Oysters ran through Victorian British cookery at every level, and Cassell's treats them as a routine flavouring rather than a luxury — sauced, scalloped, stewed, potted, put in patties and, here, folded into eggs. English oyster beds in the Thames estuary, along the Essex and Kent coasts and around Whitstable supplied the cities in large quantity through much of the nineteenth century. The pattern of the recipe is a standard omelette fourrée, the French filled omelet folded over a garnish, which English writers took up freely and stuffed with whatever the larder held. Overfishing and disease in the beds late in the century began the collapse that turned the oyster from an everyday protein into the delicacy it is now, and recipes like this one read very differently as a result.