Oysters, Fried
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons.-3 dozen oysters, 2 oz. of butter, 1 tablespoonful of ketchup, a little chopped lemon-peel, teaspoonful of chopped parsley. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 3d.
Boil the oysters for 1 minute in their own liquor and drain them; fry them with the butter, ketchup, lemon-peel and parsley; lay them on a dish and garnish OYSTERS, PICKLED. with toasted sippets and parsley. This is a delicious delicacy, and is a favourite Italian dish.
TIME.-5 minutes.
SEASONABLE from September to April. 3
A quick sauté that stands or falls on restraint: oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle. Everything else here is seasoning and garnish.
- The hinge: barely cook themA minute in their own liquor plus a brief turn in the butter is all the cooking these need; the book's stated TIME of 5 minutes covers the whole operation. Overcooked oysters shrink and go rubbery, so pull them when the frills curl.
- Ketchup means mushroom or walnutIn Beeton's kitchen "ketchup" is a thin, dark, salty mushroom or walnut condiment, not sweetened tomato sauce. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a splash of Worcestershire or a good dash of soy is the nearest common substitute in character.
- Oysters and their liquorThree dozen means shucked oysters with their liquor reserved — that liquor is the poaching medium. Buy them shucked in a tub if you would rather not open thirty-six shells, and strain the liquor of grit before heating.
- Lemon-peelZest only, no white pith, chopped very fine. A strip pared with a peeler and then minced gives cleaner flavour than a grater, which brings juice with it.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or toasted, tucked round the edge of the dish. They are there to soak up the buttery liquor and are worth making rather than skipping.
- Seasonable September to AprilThe old rule of eating oysters only in months with an R reflected spawning season and the absence of refrigeration. Modern farmed oysters are sold year-round, though many are still at their best in cold months.
- Yield and servingStated as a dish for four, about nine oysters a head, which suggests a savoury or first course rather than a main, though the book does not say so. Serve immediately on a warmed dish; reheated oysters are lost.
- Average cost, 3s 3dOysters were far more plentiful and cheaper relative to other foods than they are now, though 3s 3d for three dozen was not a trivial sum in a Victorian household. The relative cost of the dish today is inverted.
Oysters run through Victorian cookery in a way that can be hard to credit now: they were dredged in vast quantities from British beds, sold from street barrows, and used as bulk in steak pies and sauces as much as eaten on the half shell. Beeton's book gives a score or so of oyster entries — scalloped, stewed, pickled, in patties, in sauce for cod — and this fried version is one of the plainest. The claim that it is "a favourite Italian dish" is the sort of loose continental attribution common in nineteenth-century English cookbooks, and is best read as a mark of fashion rather than provenance; the butter, mushroom ketchup and toasted sippets are thoroughly English. The oyster's fall from cheap staple to luxury came later in the century, as overfishing and pollution wrecked the native beds.