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Shellfish: Oysters
Sautéd Oysters.
Put 2 tablespoonfuls butter into a sauté pan; when it is hot add as many drained oysters as will make 2 cupfuls. Add a little salt and pepper and a tablespoonful lemon juice. Shake them in the pan until the gills are curled, then add a tablespoonful parsley chopped fine. Serve on siices of toasted bread on a hot platter.
Fried Oysters with Cold Slaw.
Lay the oysters on a cloth to dry.
Roll in cracker dust, then in egg diluted with a little milk, season with pepper and salt, again cover with cracker dust. Lay in a frying basket and fry in smoking hot fat long enough to give them a light-brown color. Oysters toughen if cooked too long. Prepare only 4 at a time; more lower the temperature of the fat too much, and if they are rolled before the moment of frying, they moisten the cracker dust. Place them on a paper in the oven until they are done.
Fold a napkin and place it in the center of a platter. Pile the oysters on the napkin, and make a wreath around them of cold slaw.
Oysters à la Newburg. 25 large oysters, 1½ tablespoonfuls butter, 1 tablespoonful lemon juice, Pepper and salt, ½ cupful mushrooms, Yolks 4 eggs, 1 cupful cream, Place the oysters in a saucepan with the butter, lemon juice, pepper, and salt. Cook until the oysters are plump, then add the mushrooms cut in quarters. Beat the yolks of the egg into the cream, turn it into the oyster mixture, let it get hot and a little thickened, without boiling. Turn it into a hot dish, and garnish with croutons.-MARY RONALD.
Oysters à la George Trimble Davidson.
Melt butter the size of 2 eggs, then pour in a quart oysters and the strained liquor, flavor with salt and pepper, a teaspoonful paprika, and a dash McIlhenny's Tabasco. Cut up celery, put in 2 tablespoonfuls, and squeeze in the juice of lemon. Cook four minutes, and serve on hot toast.
A pint of rich cream added to the broth of the oysters makes the dish richer. DESCHLER WELSH.
Oyster Rarebit.
Clean and remove the hard muscles from a cupful oysters; parboil in their own liquor until the edges curl, and remove to a hot bowl. Put 1 tablespoonful butter, pound cheese (broken in small bits), 1 saltspoonful each salt and mustard, and a few grains cayenne into the chafing dish; while the cheese is melting, beat 2 eggs slightly, and add them to the oyster liquor; mix this gradually with the melted cheese, add the oysters, and pour over hot toast.
Oysters Encoquille (French recipe).
Clean large oyster shells, into each put a couple of small oysters, and sprinkle with bread crumbs which have been peppered and salted and tossed in melted butter. Set the shells closely together in a baking pan, put in a hot oven, and bake till the crumbs are delicately browned.
Serve a shell to each person on a small plate. Garnish with 1 lemon and a sprig of parsley.
Pigs in Blankets.
Dust large, plump oysters with pepper and salt, wrap each inside a SHELLFISH thin slice of bacon and skewer together with a toothpick. Lay in a hot spider, cook till oysters begin to curl and the bacon crisps. Take out the toothpicks, and serve three or four on a slice of toast to each person.
Broiled Oysters.
Drain large oysters from the liquor, dip each in melted butter, dust with pepper and salt, then roll in sifted cracker crumbs. Grease the wires of an oyster broiler, lay the oysters in closely, and broil over a clear fire until the juice begins to dow.
Serve on toast.
Roasted Oysters in the Shell.
Scrub the oyster shells thoroughly, lay them in a large roasting pan with the round side down, so they retain the juices as they cook. They may be roasted in a hot oven, on top of the stove, in a steamer, or under a blaze of a gas stove. When the shells open, remove the upper shell and serve the lower shells, as many as will go on a hot plate, each one with a hot oyster in its own juice.
Dust with pepper and salt and squeeze a dash of lemon juice over each. Serve immediately. If desired, they may be slipped from the shells upon slices of buttered toast and the juice poured over.
Scalloped Oysters. 1 pint oysters, + cupful melted butter, Pepper and salt, Dash McIlhenny's Tabasco Sauce, cupful stale bread crumbs, ½ cupful milk.
Cover the bottom of a baking dish with bread crumbs, and lay carefully over it the oysters lifted from the liquor. Cover with another layer of crumbs dusted with pepper and salt; then more oysters, and make the top layer crumbs. Strain the oyster liqmor, add to it the tabasco, melted butter, and the milk scalding hot. Pour it over the dish. Sprinkle over the top a layer of crumbs moistened with melted butter. Set it in the oven and bake till the crumbs are brown.
Creamed Oysters. 1 cupful cream sauce, 1 pint oysters.
Make a cupful cream sauce, season with salt, pepper, paprika, and celery salt. Pick over the oysters, and parboil in their own liquor until they begin to curl. Drain and add to the sauce. Serve on slices of buttered toast, in puff-paste patties, in vol-auvent, or in croustade boxes. Oyster Pie.
Line a deep dish with good puff paste, not too rich, roll out the upper crust and lay on a plate just the size of pie dish, set it on top of the dish and put into the oven, so the crust may be nearly cooked before the oysters are put in, for they re quire less cooking than the crust.
While the crust is baking, strain the liquor from the oysters and thicken.
Add 2 tablespoonfuls butter and the same of cracker crumbs, season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, or mace. the liquor boil, slip in the oysters, boil it up once, stir, remove plate with the crust, pour the oysters and hot liquor into the pie dish, put the top crust on, and return to the oven for five minutes.
A run of oyster preparations from the era when oysters were cheap urban food and every cook owned a broiler, a spider and a chafing dish. Most of these need less cooking than the text implies, and the vessels named have modern equivalents.
- The hinge: stop at the curlAn oyster is done the moment its frill contracts, which is roughly 1-2 minutes in butter or its own liquor. Every one of these dishes is ruined by another two minutes; the book says so itself under the fried oysters and it applies throughout.
- VesselsA spider is a cast-iron skillet (originally a footed one). A chafing dish is a tabletop pan over a spirit burner; use a small heavy saucepan over low heat or a double boiler, which is safer for the rarebit. An oyster broiler is a hinged wire grill basket, and a stovetop grill pan works in its place.
- Oven heatThe book's "hot oven" corresponds to roughly 400-450F on a modern dial, which suits the crumb-topped Encoquille and the oyster pie crust. Scalloped oysters do better around 400F for about 25 minutes, long enough to brown the crumbs without overcooking the shellfish.
- Quantities of oystersA pint of shucked oysters is roughly 16-25 medium ones and weighs about a pound with its liquor; it serves three or four. The Newburg's 25 large oysters with a cupful of cream serves about four.
- Missing fractions in the scalloped oystersThe butter and crumb amounts in that ingredient list are incomplete as printed. A workable ratio for a pint of oysters is 1/4 cup melted butter and about 1 1/2 cups stale crumbs; the crumbs should be dry and coarse, not fine packaged breadcrumbs, or the dish sets solid.
- Cheese for the rarebitThe printed amount reads simply "pound cheese", and a fraction has almost certainly dropped out. For a cupful of oysters and two eggs, something on the order of 1/2 lb of sharp aged cheddar, broken small, works. Keep the heat gentle and add the egg-and-liquor mixture off the boil or it will curdle rather than thicken.
- Deep frying, four at a timeThe instruction is sound and worth following: fat at 375F, no more than four oysters per batch, breaded at the last second. "Place them on a paper in the oven until they are done" means hold the finished batches warm on absorbent paper, not continue cooking them.
- A saltspoonfulAbout 1/4 teaspoon. "Butter the size of 2 eggs" in the Davidson recipe works out somewhere between 4 and 8 tablespoons; period tables commonly reckon butter the size of an egg at around 2 oz.
- Newburg without boilingEgg yolks beaten into cream will scramble above about 180F. Add the mixture off the heat, return to low heat and stir until it coats a spoon. Once it breaks it is difficult to bring back.
- Raw-oyster sourcingRoasted oysters in the shell only just cook through, and shells that refuse to open should be discarded. Buy from a dealer who can show a harvest tag, keep them cold and cup-side down, and use them within a day or two.
Oysters ran through American cooking of the 1880-1910 period the way canned tuna ran through the 1950s: abundant, delivered inland by rail in barrels and cans, and cheap enough that a household book could afford a dozen preparations in a row. Several of these names carry their moment with them. Newburg was made famous at Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s and 1880s, and "pigs in blankets" meant a bacon-wrapped oyster long before it meant a sausage in pastry. The reference to McIlhenny's Tabasco by brand, twice, marks how quickly that Louisiana pepper sauce had become a pantry standard after the Civil War. The attributions are typical of the genre too: Mary Ronald wrote The Century Cook Book (1895), and a dish here is named for a private gentleman rather than a restaurant.