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Egg-Plant Oysters
Wash a medium sized egg-plant, throw into a kettle of boiling water, and boil until tender, but not broken. When done, take out the inside, mash, season highly with salt, pepper and butter. Beat the yolks of three eggs until light, stir them into the mixture, add sufficient bread crumbs (about one cup) to slightly thicken. Fry the same as Corn Oysters. Serve very hot for breakfast.
A fritter batter bound with cooked eggplant pulp, dropped into fat in small spoonfuls so the finished cakes resemble fried oysters. The cross-reference to "Corn Oysters" is doing most of the work, so that is where to start.
- What "fry the same as Corn Oysters" meansDrop the mixture by spoonfuls into a shallow depth of hot fat in a heavy skillet and turn once when the underside is set and browned. A few minutes a side should be enough; the eggplant is already cooked through and the frying is only for color and a crust. The original specifies neither temperature nor timing.
- Boiling the eggplant wholeA medium eggplant will want something in the region of 15 to 20 minutes in boiling water to go tender without collapsing, but the recipe's test is the fruit itself, not the clock. The instruction "but not broken" matters: a split eggplant takes up water, and waterlogged pulp is unlikely to thicken with a single cup of crumbs.
- Drain the pulpScoop the flesh out and press it in a sieve or squeeze it in a towel before mashing. Modern eggplants hold a great deal of water, and wet pulp is the usual reason these cakes fall apart in the pan.
- Season highlyTaken literally. Eggplant pulp is bland and absorbent, so expect to use a full teaspoon of salt and a generous grind of pepper for one eggplant, plus a tablespoon or two of butter. Taste the mixture before the yolks go in.
- Bread crumbsDry fine crumbs rather than soft fresh ones will give a firmer mixture, though cookbooks of the period use the term both ways. Add the cup gradually and stop when the mixture will hold its shape on a spoon.
- The three whitesThe recipe uses the yolks only. Save the whites for another dish rather than folding them in; beaten whites would lighten the mixture and may make it harder to hold together in the fat.
- YieldOne medium eggplant should give a dozen or more small cakes, enough for a breakfast dish for three or four. The original insists on serving them very hot.
Nineteenth-century American cookery was full of "mock" dishes that borrowed the name of a prized food for a cheap one, and oysters were the usual model: salsify was sold as oyster plant, corn oysters were a standard summer fritter, and eggplant and even parsnip took their turn. The resemblance is one of shape and texture rather than flavor, a small browned fritter about the size of a fried oyster. Eggplant itself was still a slightly exotic vegetable in American kitchens at this date, and cookbooks of the period tend to treat it as something requiring instruction. Its appearance makes sense on two counts: it is at its peak in late summer, and a dish of small fritters gave a cook a breakfast course without the long roasting or stewing that heated up a kitchen in August.