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Oyster Pan-Roast
1 tablespoon butter 1 pint oysters Salt and pepper 6 slices buttered toast Put the butter in the chafing dish and when it melts add the oysters, washed, and the juice which has come from them, strained. Season; cover; cook for two minutes and serve on the buttered toast.
A chafing-dish recipe of the plainest kind, and the two-minute cooking time is the whole point. Everything else is seasoning and toast.
- Two minutes means two minutesOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and they plump; past that they tighten into rubber. Pull them off the heat while the liquor is still hot rather than boiling hard.
- A pint of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure, and a pint is roughly a dozen to two dozen medium oysters, weighing about a pound. Shucked oysters are still sold this way; buy a pint in their liquor and use both.
- Straining the liquorThe straining is not fussiness. Shucked oysters carry shell grit and it settles in the liquor, so pour it through a fine sieve or a doubled square of cheesecloth before it goes in the pan.
- Chafing dish or skilletA chafing dish is a shallow pan over a spirit lamp, and its virtue is gentle heat at the table. A wide skillet over medium heat does the same job; avoid anything that concentrates heat in a hot spot under the oysters.
- Butter is scantOne tablespoon for a pint of oysters is a lean amount by modern taste. Two or three, worked in off the heat at the end, gives the liquor enough body to soak the toast without turning it to soup.
- Toast underneathToast the bread dry and firm, then butter it. Soft or fresh bread collapses under the hot liquor, which may be why period recipes call for toast rather than plain bread.
- YieldSix slices of toast suggests three servings as a supper dish, or six as a first course. It does not hold; serve it directly from the pan.
Chafing-dish cookery had a long vogue in American households from the 1880s through the 1920s, and books of the period routinely gave it a chapter of its own. The appeal was social: a spirit lamp and a shallow pan let a hostess cook at the table, without a servant, in front of guests, which suited late suppers, bachelor rooms and after-theatre entertaining. Oysters were the natural material for it u cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast before the great beds were fished down, sold shucked by the pint, and needing almost no cooking. A "pan-roast" here means nothing roasted at all, only oysters heated quickly in butter and their own liquor, as distinct from a stew, which added milk or cream.