Fried Oysters
Fried oysters are prepared same as Sautéd Oysters except they are fried in deep fat. • Suprême Oysters 1 pint oysters 2 tablespoons butter cup chicken stock cup oyster liquor 2 tablespoons onion salt, cayenne, nutmeg 4 tablespoons flour 3 egg yolks cup cream parsley ½ cup finely cut chicken Melt butter; add onion; when yellow, add flour; when well blended, add liquids and seasonings. Cook five minutes; add chicken, yolks of eggs beaten until thick, cream beaten until stiff. When thick, cool. Parboil oysters; drain and dry. Cover oysters with chicken mixture, dip in crumbs, egg and crumb, and fry in hot fat. Drain. Serve on hot dish and garnish with lemon and mayonnaise dressing.
Two preparations sit here: a one-line note on frying oysters in deep fat, and the far more elaborate Suprême Oysters, in which parboiled oysters are jacketed in a stiff chicken velouté, breaded and fried. The second is the one that needs attention.
- The hinge: chill the coating hardThe hinge: cool the coating until firm -- The recipe says only "When thick, cool." In practice the chicken mixture needs to be cooked down until genuinely stiff and left to set until firm before it will stay on the oysters; a merely tepid mixture is likely to slump off in the fat.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat" and gives no figure. Frying somewhere around 375F suits this kind of crumbed article: much cooler and the coating soaks, much hotter and the crumbs colour before the interior heats through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Parboil means seconds, not minutesThe recipe says only "parboil." Take the oysters just to the point where the edges ruffle, roughly 30 to 60 seconds, then lift them out; note that the oyster liquor is wanted for the sauce. Oysters held at a simmer shrink and turn rubbery, and these get further cooking in the fryer.
- Dry them thoroughlyAfter parboiling, spread the oysters on a towel and blot. Any surface moisture keeps the chicken mixture from adhering and makes the fat spit.
- Proportions for the sauceThe fractions before "cup chicken stock," "cup oyster liquor" and "cup cream" are missing from the text as printed here, so the exact volumes cannot be recovered. What is clear is that 2 tablespoons butter to 4 tablespoons flour is a very heavy roux, intended to produce a thick binding paste for coating rather than a pouring sauce.
- Whipped cream and yolksThe cream is beaten stiff and the yolks beaten thick, then both are stirred into the hot base off direct high heat. Add the yolks first and work quickly so they thicken without scrambling.
- "Egg and crumb"The standard three-stage breading of the period: crumbs, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then crumbs again. Fine dry crumbs hold better than fresh.
- YieldA pint of shucked oysters will give something in the region of 18 to 24 pieces depending on size, which would serve about four as a first course.
Suprême Oysters belongs to a tradition of cookery writing in which French restaurant technique was translated into books meant for a household cook with a coal range. The name comes from sauce suprême, the chicken velouté enriched with cream that was one of the standard building blocks of the classical repertoire; here it is boiled down past sauce consistency into a chilled paste used the way a duxelles or a thick béchamel was used in croquettes, as a jacket that lets a soft, wet ingredient survive the fryer. Oysters were still cheap and abundant along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in this period, which is why cookbooks of the era treat a pint of them as an everyday quantity and can afford to spend so much labour dressing them up.