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Panned Oysters (Tablespoon butter tablespoons)
25 oysters 1 tablespoon butter 2 tablespoons currant jelly Salt and pepper Squares of toast Melt the butter in the chafing dish; add the oysters and cook until the edges begin to curl; add the jelly; season and serve on small squares of toast.
A one-pan chafing-dish supper that takes about three minutes once the pan is hot. Everything depends on pulling the oysters the moment their edges ruffle.
- The hinge: curled edgesShucked oysters are done when the frills at the mantle draw up and the flesh firms slightly, roughly 1 to 2 minutes over direct heat. Past that they tighten into rubber and weep liquor into the pan.
- Quantity and yieldTwenty-five shucked oysters is roughly a pint, depending on their size; graded counts run anywhere from about twenty to nearly forty to the pint. On small toasts that would stretch to three or four as a first course. Buy them already shucked in their liquor, or shuck 25 medium ones yourself.
- Drain them firstThe recipe says nothing about draining. If yours come in a tub of liquor, drain them well before they go in the pan, or the butter and jelly will thin to a puddle instead of glazing.
- The chafing dishThis is the shallow blazer pan set over a spirit lamp, giving gentle direct heat at the table. A heavy skillet or a small sauté pan over medium heat is the equivalent; the water-bath insert is too slow for this, as the point is to curl the edges quickly.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly, the tart sort still sold for lamb and game, not a sweet jam. Two tablespoons melt into the butter and oyster liquor to make a thin sweet-sharp glaze. Warm it in with the pan off the flame if you want it smooth.
- Butter is scantOne tablespoon for a pint of oysters is lean by modern habit. Two gives a sauce with enough body to coat the toast.
- The toastCut small squares from firm white bread and toast them dry and crisp just before serving. Soft toast collapses under the liquor within a minute of plating.
- SeasoningSalt lightly and late. Oyster liquor is already saline, and the jelly pushes the balance quickly.
Chafing-dish cookery had a long vogue in American households from the 1890s into the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period often gave it a chapter of its own. The appeal is usually said to have been social as much as culinary: a spirit lamp under a shallow pan let a hostess cook at the table without a servant, so the repertoire ran to things that cook in minutes, chiefly oysters, eggs, creamed shellfish and Welsh rarebit. Oysters were a natural centerpiece because they were widely available along the East Coast, sold shucked by the quart, and they needed almost no cooking urtwentieth century as the beds were fished out. The currant jelly here reflects a nineteenth-century taste for pairing sweet-tart preserves with savory dishes, the same instinct that put currant jelly beside mutton, venison and game birds.