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OYSTERS, SCALLOPED (another way)
Open and beard two dozen oysters. Put the liquid into a saucepan, with an inch of thin lemon-rind, a few grains of cayenne, and half a blade of mace, and when it boils strain it over the oysters, and let these remain in it until they are quite cold. Mix three ounces of fine bread-crumbs with half a tea-spoonful of grated nutmeg, and a little salt and pepper. Drain the oysters from the liquid, and season them with a little pepper. Butter the scallop-shells, and sprinkle some bread-crumbs over them. Fill them up with alternate layers of oysters, seasoned bread-crumbs, and small pieces of butter; pour in a little of the oyster liquor, and finish with a thick layer of bread-crumbs, softened with butter. Put the shells into a quick oven, or into a Dutch oven, before a brisk fire, and bake until they are lightly and equally browned. Serve very hot. Time, a quarter of an hour to bake. Probable cost of oysters, 1s. 6d. to 3s. per dozen. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward gratin of oysters and buttered crumbs, but the timing and the oven need translating before it works on a modern range.
- The hinge: don't cook the oysters twiceThe oysters are already firmed by the boiling strained liquor poured over them, so the bake is only to brown the crumb topping. Fifteen minutes will only be safe for the oysters if the shells go in very hot and shallow and the top browns fast; watch the browning rather than the clock, and pull them the moment the crumbs colour.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 425-450F. That heat is what makes the recipe possible: a brisk top browning within the quarter of an hour the book allows, rather than a slow bake that stews the oysters into rubber.
- "A Dutch oven, before a brisk fire"Not the modern lidded casserole but a reflector oven, an open-fronted tin box set facing the hearth. The nearest equivalent is a hot broiler, which browns the crumbs from above in two or three minutes.
- BeardingTrimming off the dark frilly gill fringe. Modern shucked oysters need little more than a check for shell fragments; the beard is usually left on and is perfectly edible.
- Quantity of oystersTwo dozen shucked oysters is roughly a pint, depending on size. Save every drop of the liquor, since it is both the poaching liquid and the only moisture in the finished dish.
- Mace and lemon rindMace is the dried lacy aril that covers the nutmeg seed; a blade is a single piece of it, so half a blade is a pinch, no more than an eighth of a teaspoon of the ground spice if blades are not to hand. Take the rind in wide strips with no white pith, and strain both out with the liquor.
- Scallop shellsDeep scallop shells were sold as kitchen equipment and are still available; 4-inch gratin dishes or shallow ramekins do the same job. Shallow and wide matters more than the material, so the topping browns before the interior overheats.
- YieldThe book says four or five, which is a starter portion of five or six oysters each. Serve immediately, with the crumbs still crisp.
Cassell's gives several methods for scalloped oysters, quoting a price of 1s. 6d. to 3s. a dozen. "Scalloped" is generally said to have meant exactly what it says, cooked and served in a scallop shell; the word only later drifted to mean any dish layered with crumbs or sauce and baked. The technique of pouring the boiling seasoned liquor over the raw oysters and leaving them to cool in it is a thrifty piece of Victorian practice, setting the oysters gently while extracting all their flavour into the liquid that later moistens the crumbs. The decline of the English oyster beds in the following decades, generally traced to overfishing and disease, is what turned recipes like this from ordinary supper food into something now read as extravagant.