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Oysters (Tinned), Scalloped
INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 persons.-1 tin of oysters, 1 oz. of butter, 1/4 lb. of breadcrumbs, cayenne, salt. AVERAGE COST, 8d. Butter a shallow tin, and strew it with bread-crumbs, which very lightly sprinkle with salt. Over the bread-crumbs lay the oysters, seasoning them with cayenne and 3 dessertspoonfuls of their liquor. Cover dessertspoonfuls of their liquor.
Cover them with bread-crumbs, and put the remainder of the butter' over them in small pieces. Bake them in a Dutch oven, or in an ordinary one, afterwards browning them before the fire.
TIME. From 10 to 15 minutes to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A brief, thrifty supper dish built on tinned oysters, which are already fully cooked when they leave the can. Everything here depends on heating them through without letting them tighten.
- The hinge: keep the bake shortTinned oysters have been cooked in the can, so this is a reheat and a browning, not a cooking. Ten minutes is nearer the mark than fifteen, and the moment the crumbs colour they are done; longer and the oysters turn tough and shrunken.
- "1 tin of oysters"Victorian tins varied; modern tins run about 8 oz gross, roughly 3 to 4 oz drained. For two people, use one or two tins depending on size, and reserve the liquor before draining.
- BreadcrumbsA quarter pound of dry crumbs is about 1 cup. Fresh crumbs weigh less per cup, so you will need closer to 2 cups if using soft ones. Half go underneath, half on top.
- Butter1 oz is 2 tablespoons. Some goes to buttering the dish, the rest is dotted over the top crumbs, so keep a little back rather than melting it all at once.
- Oven temperatureBeeton gives none. Bake at 400F (200C) in the upper part of the oven; hot enough to brown the crumbs in the short time the oysters can stand.
- "A Dutch oven"Not the modern cast-iron pot. In Beeton's day this was an open-fronted tin reflector set before the fire. The recipe's separate browning before the fire attaches to the alternative of baking in an ordinary oven. Use a grill or broiler for two or three minutes instead of the fire.
- SeasoningThree dessertspoonfuls is about two tablespoons of the reserved liquor, which is salty on its own. Salt the lower crumb layer very lightly, as the instruction says, and taste before adding more.
- Vessel and yieldA shallow tin means a small gratin dish or two individual ramekins. The recipe gives it as a dish for two, and it does not reheat well.
Scalloped oysters were a fixture of British and American cookery long before Mrs Beeton, the name generally accepted to come from the scallop shells the mixture was originally baked and served in rather than from any scallop in the dish. What marks this version as late Victorian is the tin: commercial oyster canning grew rapidly through the second half of the nineteenth century, above all around Chesapeake Bay, with British shops largely selling imported tins, and by the time the expanded editions of Beeton's work were being assembled a tinned oyster was cheap enough to make a supper for two for eightpence. That is also why the entry says seasonable at any time by the old rule against the months without an R, but a tin knew no season. The Dutch oven and the final browning before the fire are the older technology showing through.