Broiled Oysters
Look over oysters, reject shells, and dry oysters between towels. Dip in melted butter or olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat broiler; grease; arrange oysters on broiler; broil over a clear fire four to six minutes, turning often. Serve on squares or rounds of toasted bread spread with butter and slightly moistened with oyster liquor. Garnish with a sprig of parsley and one quarter slice of lemon.
A gridiron recipe from the era when "broiler" meant a hinged wire basket held over coals, not a heating element in an oven. Two adjustments make it work indoors.
- "Broiler" means a wire gridIn this period a broiler could be a plain gridiron or a double-sided hinged wire rack that clamped the food so it could be flipped over the fire. Either suits a recipe that says to grease it and turn often. Modern equivalent: an oiled grill basket over charcoal, or a preheated cast-iron pan or sheet under an overhead broiler set to high, with the oven rack close to the element.
- "A clear fire"Coals burned down to steady red with no flame and no smoke. Dripping butter causing flare-ups may be part of why the recipe calls for turning often, though it gives no reason.
- Cut the timeThe upper end of four to six minutes will shrink oysters to erasers. Broil only until the edges ruffle and curl and the flesh firms, often under two minutes a side over coals and less under a hot overhead broiler. They are done when they plump and the surface looks set.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Wet oysters steam instead of browning and the butter slides off. Drain, blot between towels, and let them sit uncovered a few minutes before dipping.
- Save the liquorThe liquor is used to moisten the toast, so hold it back when you drain the oysters. Moisten only slightly, as the recipe says, or the bread collapses.
- Which oystersUse large shucked oysters, sold as select or larger. Small ones overcook before they colour.
- YieldThe original gives none. Figure 4 to 6 oysters per person on one square of toast, serving three or four from a pint.
Broiling over the coals was one of the standard treatments for the shucked oyster in American cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward, alongside frying, scalloping, stewing and roasting in the shell; Lowney's gives it without explanation. Oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland packed in ice or in sealed cans, and cookbooks of the period treat them as an everyday protein rather than a luxury. The service here — on buttered toast moistened with the oyster liquor, parsley and a lemon quarter — is one familiar presentation of the day, and the same toast base carries creamed oysters, oysters on skewers and countless other chafing-dish preparations in books of the same decade. Lowney's was published by a chocolate company, which explains the confectionery weighting of the book as a whole, but its savoury chapters are conventional turn-of-the-century domestic-science fare.