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To Fry Oysters
Drain the oysters through a sieve; sprinkle a little salt and pepper over them. Dip each oyster into meal. Have the pan hot, and drop in an equal portion of lard and butter; when boiling, put in the oysters and fry. Do not let them stand but serve hot.--Mrs. E.
A four-line Virginia recipe that assumes you know oysters. The whole thing hinges on dryness and speed.
- Dry the oysters properlyDraining through a sieve is the minimum; blot them on a towel as well. Surface liquor turns the cornmeal to paste and the oysters will steam in the fat rather than crisp.
- "Meal" means cornmeal"Meal" most likely means cornmeal -- in a Virginia book of this period, unqualified "meal" would usually be understood as cornmeal rather than flour. That gives a sandy, crackling crust quite unlike flour or modern breadcrumbs.
- Fat temperature"when boiling" is the period way of saying the fat is fully hot and bubbling around whatever is dropped in; in modern terms something in the region of 350-375F. Much below that the meal absorbs grease; much above it the butter solids blacken.
- The butter will darkenThe equal mix of lard and butter presumably brought butter's flavor to a fat that stands heat better, and the milk solids in the butter scorch fast at frying heat. Clarified butter, or adding the butter to the pan a moment after the lard, keeps it from burning.
- Cook timeShucked oysters need 60 to 90 seconds a side in shallow fat, until the meal is gold. Anything approaching four or five minutes shrinks them to rubber, which is the usual failure with this dish.
- Pan-fry, not deep-fryEnough fat to come a third of the way up the oysters, in a single uncrowded layer. Fry in batches; a crowded pan drops the temperature and the crust never sets.
- "Do not let them stand"This is the real instruction. Fried oysters go soft within a few minutes as internal moisture migrates into the crust, so they should reach the table straight from the pan rather than being held in a warm oven.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A pint of shucked oysters, depending on size, serves three or four as a course.
Fried oysters belong to the era when oysters were cheap protein rather than a luxury: Chesapeake beds supplied Virginia and Maryland kitchens in enormous volume through the nineteenth century, and oysters arrived by the barrel and the gallon can, appearing fried, scalloped, in fritters, stews and pies. If the "meal" of the recipe is cornmeal, as is usually assumed though never specified, the coating rather than a flour batter would mark this as a Southern treatment, drawing on the same pantry that produced cornbread and hoecake. Like much of *Housekeeping in Old Virginia* (1879), the recipe is a contributed household note signed with an initial, and it reads as one cook reminding another of a familiar routine rather than teaching a beginner, which is why it gives no quantities and no timing at all.