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Croûtons of Bread (Oysters Two ounces of Butter)
Oysters. Two ounces of Butter.
Soft roes of Bloaters.
Salt. Lemon-juice and Cayenne.
Take the beards off the oysters and sauté them with the soft roes of bloaters in the butter, sprinkle over a little salt and cayenne. Have some round croûtons fried a nice brown, place a nice piece of roe on each croûton and an oyster on the top.
Squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice on each and serve very hot.
Ravioli à l'Italienne.
Ingredients.
Quarter of a pound of short Crust.
Quarter of a pound of cooked Fowl.
A late-Victorian savoury: fried bread rounds topped with soft herring roe and a sautéed oyster. The original gives no counts, so scale by the number of croûtons you want. Note that the last two lines belong to the next recipe in the book, which the typesetter ran together with this one — ignore the short crust and cooked fowl.
- The hinge: barely cook the oystersOysters need 60–90 seconds in hot butter, just until the edges ruffle and they firm slightly. Any longer and they shrink and turn rubbery, which ruins the point of the dish.
- Soft roes of bloatersA bloater is a whole, lightly salted and cold-smoked herring; the "soft roe" is the milt from the male fish. Milt is sold frozen at some fishmongers and in tins; soft herring roe substitutes directly, and cod milt (shirako) works if that is what you can get.
- "Take the beards off"The beard is the frilled dark gill fringe on a shucked oyster. Pull it away with your fingers or trim it with scissors — it is stringy when sautéed.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of butter is about 55 g. The recipe gives no counts: allow one oyster and one piece of roe per croûton, and judge the number of rounds by how much roe you have.
- CroûtonsThe recipe asks only for round croûtons fried a nice brown: small rounds of bread, shallow-fried until golden on both sides and drained on paper before topping.
- SeasoningCayenne in this period means a light dusting, not a teaspoon. Bloater roe is already salty from the cure, so salt at the end and taste first.
- Yield and serviceSix to eight croûtons serve four as a savoury course after the sweet, or as canapés with sherry. Assemble at the last moment — the croûtons soften within minutes and the dish is meant to go to table very hot.
The savoury was a fixed course in British dinners of the 1880s to the 1920s: something small, hot and salty served after the sweet, by tradition chiefly for the men at table, and often built on a fried cro— herring cured whole at Yarmouth and other east-coast ports owere were prees was prized as a delicacy on their own, often devilled on toast. Combining the two on one cro on is typical of the genre's logic: two cheap, strongly flavoured sea ingredients stacked for maximum savour in one mouthful. The course faded with the shortening of formal dinners after the First World War, and the later collapse of the herring fishery took bloater roe out of most kitchens.