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Baked Oysters
Mrs. R. S. Triggs. 1 pt. oysters 1% C dried bread crumbs 1½ t salt Dash of pepper 1/3 C butter 1⅛ egg, beaten and diluted with 1 T water Finger each oyster, wash and drain. Mix salt and pepper with bread crumbs. Melt butter in a sauce pan, add seasoned crumbs. Dip oysters first into the crumbs, then the egg, and into the crumbs again. Grease two glass or enameled pie dishes. Spread one layer of oysters on each dish. Bake at 450 degrees 15 to 20 minutes.
Mrs. R. M. Dillon.
A straightforward oven-fried oyster, breaded twice and baked hot rather than deep-fried. The whole dish depends on the oysters being dry before they meet the crumbs.
- "Finger each oyster"This means running each oyster between your fingers to find and remove bits of shell, which are common in shucked oysters sold in liquor. Do it before draining, then let them sit in a colander several minutes.
- Dry oysters, or nothing sticksAfter draining, blot the oysters on paper towels. Any surface liquid dissolves the first coat of crumbs and the breading slides off in the oven.
- Quantities1 pt oysters is roughly a pound drained, somewhere around 16-24 shucked oysters depending on size. Read C as cup, t as teaspoon, T as tablespoon; 1/3 C butter is 5 tablespoons plus a teaspoon.
- Buttered crumbsMelting the butter into the seasoned crumbs is what browns the coating without frying. The mixture will look damp and sandy rather than loose; press it onto the oysters.
- The dishesThe recipe calls for glass or enameled dishes, and the single layer of oysters on each is the substance of the instruction. Crowding steams the oysters and the crust stays pale.
- Time at 450FFifteen to twenty minutes is likely to be long for shucked oysters at this heat. Start checking around 10 minutes: they are done when the crumbs are golden and the edges of the oysters have just ruffled.
- Salt1½ teaspoons of salt for this quantity of crumbs is assertive, and oysters bring their own salt. Cut it to a teaspoon if the oysters are briny.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a pint of oysters spread in a single layer over two pie dishes will serve a small table. Lemon is an obvious accompaniment.
Community cookbooks of the first decades of the twentieth century lean heavily on oysters: rail transport brought shucked oysters inland, so congregations well away from the coast could treat them as an everyday luncheon food rather than a luxury. Baking breaded oysters in a hot oven instead of frying them in deep fat may well have been a practical choice for a church supper or a ladies' luncheon, where a number of portions had to appear at once and a skillet could only manage a few at a time, though the cookbooks themselves do not say so. The double crumbing with an egg wash between coats is a common American breading procedure of the era.