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Oyster Fritters
Oyster fritters are made in the same way as clams, from either whole or chopped oysters; but in using the oysters whole it is not necessary to cook them first, they will cook sufficiently in the hot fat while browning.
This is a variation entry: the batter and method come from the clam fritter recipe earlier in the section, and the note here only tells you what changes when oysters are used. A few practical points fill the gaps.
- The hinge: dry the oystersDrain the oysters well and blot them on a towel before they go into the batter. Wet oysters shed liquor into hot fat, which spits violently and keeps the coating from setting.
- Batter proportionsThe original assumes you have the clam fritter batter in front of you, which is not reproduced here. If you need to build one, a plain fritter batter of roughly 1 cup flour, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon baking powder, a little salt, and enough milk (about 1/2 cup) to make a batter that coats a spoon thickly will serve; some of the reserved oyster liquor can replace part of the milk. These are working figures, not the compiler's.
- Fat temperatureThe entry gives no temperature. For guidance, deep fat at 365-375F suits a battered fritter: below that the batter soaks; above it, the crust browns before the oyster inside is hot. The familiar test is a cube of bread browning in about 60 seconds.
- Why whole oysters need no pre-cookingOysters are soft and thin and need only a short time in heat, unlike clams, which the earlier entry requires be cooked before battering (the method there is not repeated here). Two to three minutes in the fat, until the coating is deep gold, should be enough for a whole oyster in batter.
- Do not extend the fryingOysters held in fat past the point of browning contract and turn rubbery, and the liquor cooks out of them. Pull the fritters as soon as they color.
- Whole versus choppedWhole oysters give one fritter each and a distinct bite; chopped oysters stirred into the batter and dropped by spoonfuls give a more uniform cake and stretch a small quantity further.
- Yield and servingA pint of shucked oysters, fried whole, will give roughly 15 to 20 fritters, depending on their size. Drain on paper and serve hot, with lemon or a tartare sauce.
Fritters of this kind belong to the long American habit of treating shellfish as a cheap frying staple rather than a luxury: through the nineteenth century oysters were shipped inland by barrel and rail in enormous quantity, and cookbooks of the period give them in soups, stews, pies, patties and batters as readily as they give potatoes. The placement of oyster fritters alongside the other batter recipes rather than with fish or shellfish reflects the compiler's method: the batter is the recipe, and clams, oysters, corn or apples are simply what gets folded into it. The single-sentence entry works by cross-reference, and assumes a cook who has already read the page above.