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Panned Oysters (Tablespoon butter Juice)
25 oysters 1 tablespoon butter Juice of 1/2 lemon Salt and pepper Squares of toast
This is a loose-leaf page in the terse style of its era: the ingredients are given and the method is assumed to be known. "Panned" means cooked quickly in a shallow pan in butter, not baked.
- The hinge: two to three minutesOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and they firm slightly. Beyond that they tighten and turn rubbery, and no amount of butter recovers them.
- QuantityTwenty-five shucked oysters is roughly a pint, which serves two generously or three as a first course over toast.
- Heat and panUse a wide skillet over fairly high heat so the liquor that the oysters shed reduces rather than poaches them. A crowded pan steams them and they go grey.
- Drain firstLift the oysters out of their liquor and let them drain before they go into the butter. The reserved liquor can be added to the pan at the end to make a short sauce for the toast.
- Lemon lastAdd the lemon juice off the heat, after the oysters are done, rather than letting it cook with them.
- One tablespoon of butterThat is a modest amount for 25 oysters. Two tablespoons gives you enough fat to carry the seasoning and moisten the toast without turning the dish greasy.
- The toastCut thick, toast dry and hard, and have it on the plates before the oysters go into the pan. Soft toast collapses under the liquor within a minute.
- SeasoningSalt sparingly. Oysters and their liquor are already saline; season at the end and taste first.
Panning was a common quick treatment for shucked oysters in American kitchens through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside frying, stewing and scalloping. Oysters were then cheap and abundant along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, which is why household books of the period carry a dozen or more oyster recipes where a modern one might carry two.