Home › Thanksgiving Dinners › Scalloped Oysters
Scalloped Oysters
1 pint oysters 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup grated bread crumbs 1/2 cup coarse cracker crumbs 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 cup oyster liquid Drain and clean oysters, save liquor. Rub pudding dish with cold butter, sprinkle bottom with layer bread crumbs. Mix rest of bread and cracker crumbs and stir in the shortening. Arrange oysters and bread in alternate layers, seasoning each with salt and pepper. Pour oyster liquor over ingredients, bake 25 to 30 minutes in quick oven (450 degrees). Serves 6.
A plain baked oyster scallop of the standard American type, with the oven temperature helpfully spelled out. A few points of translation and one structural rule that the text leaves unsaid.
- Two layers, no moreThe classic rule for scalloped oysters is never more than two layers of oysters with crumbs between and on top. Pile them deeper and the middle stews in its own liquor while the top browns, giving you rubbery oysters in a soupy dish.
- ShorteningIn a book of this vintage "shortening" means any solid fat: butter, lard or a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Melted butter is the sensible choice here, 1/2 cup being 8 tablespoons, tossed through the crumbs so they toast rather than sit pale and greasy.
- The oyster liquorA pint of shucked oysters rarely yields a full cup of strained liquor. Make up the difference with milk, light cream or bottled clam juice; do not add plain water, which flattens the whole dish.
- Strain itOyster liquor carries grit and shell fragments. Pour it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes over the crumbs.
- Quick ovenThe recipe gives the number: 450F. At that heat 25 to 30 minutes is at the long end for a shallow dish. Watch for the liquid bubbling at the edges and a browned top; oysters are done when their edges have just curled.
- Cracker crumbsCoarse crumbs from a plain soda or common cracker are the likely intention. They hold their texture where soft bread crumbs dissolve into the liquor, which may be why the recipe calls for both.
- Pudding dishA baking dish; the recipe does not specify a size. A fairly shallow one suits the two-layer arrangement, which wants width rather than depth.
- YieldSix as a side dish rather than six as a main course.
Scalloped oysters became a fixture of the American Thanksgiving table in the nineteenth century, when barrels of shucked Chesapeake and Long Island oysters travelled inland by rail and canal and turned what had been a coastal food into a national one. The name reflects the old cooking sense of 'to scallop' -- to bake with crumbs in a shell or shallow dish -- a sense usually traced back to the scallop shell itself.