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Oyster Fritters
Beat two eggs very light; then stir in two tablespoonfuls cream or milk, three tablespoonfuls sifted flour, a pinch of salt; dip the oysters in this and fry them in hot lard.--Mrs. B.
Oyster Fritters.
Wipe the oysters dry. Beat 6 eggs light, and stir into them: 6 tablespoonfuls flour. 1 1/2 pint rich milk.
Beat to smooth batter. Have in a pan some butter and lard; when it begins to froth, put a small ladleful of the batter, with an oyster in the middle into it to fry. If too thin, add flour; if too thick, milk.--Mrs. R.
Two batters from two contributors: Mrs. B.'s is a thick coating batter for individual dipped oysters, Mrs. R.'s a thin pour batter in which each oyster is enclosed like a drop pancake. Both are shallow-fried, not deep-fried.
- Dry the oysters firstThis is the hinge of the dish. Shucked oysters carry a great deal of liquor, and wet oysters thin the batter off their own surface and spit violently in the fat. Drain them, then blot between towels.
- Mrs. R.'s batter is very thin as writtenSix eggs, six tablespoons flour and a pint and a half of milk gives something closer to crepe batter than fritter batter. The recipe anticipates this — "if too thin, add flour" — and you should expect to add a good deal, until the batter coats a spoon.
- Fat and panThe recipe does not say how much fat, only "some butter and lard": enough in a heavy skillet to come partway up the fritter. Butter alone will brown too fast; the lard raises the smoke point. Any neutral fat or shortening substitutes for lard, though lard gives the crispest edge.
- When the fat is ready"When it begins to froth" refers to the butter's water boiling off. Practically, a drop of batter should sizzle and rise at once without darkening in the first few seconds.
- Cook timeAn oyster is done the moment its edges ruffle. Two to three minutes total, turning once, is enough for the batter to set golden; longer and the oyster inside tightens and turns rubbery.
- MeasuresA pint and a half, at 16 fluid ounces to the pint, is 3 cups. The book does not define its tablespoon, and period spoons could run larger than the modern one.
- YieldNeither cook says. Mrs. B.'s batter coats roughly a dozen to eighteen oysters; Mrs. R.'s quantity, once thickened, makes enough for two to three dozen — a party dish. Serve straight from the pan with lemon or a peppery vinegar.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, is why this page carries two recipes for one dish under two sets of initials — the book prints what each woman sent in rather than reconciling them. Oysters in the Chesapeake in the 1870s were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel, which is why a Virginia cookbook can call for them by the dozen without comment; the great Tidewater oyster fisheries were near their peak in exactly these decades, before overharvesting and disease reduced them. Frying oysters in batter is older than the book and common up and down the Atlantic coast, and the two versions here mark the standard split in technique: dip-and-fry, which keeps the oyster's shape, versus the enclosed drop fritter, which turns it into a small filled pancake.