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Panned or Deviled Oysters
2 tablespoons butter. 2 doz. oysters. Pepper and salt. Wash, wipe and dry oysters. Put butter in spider. When melted put in oysters. Dust with pepper and salt. Cook until oysters curl. Serve on buttered toast. Deviled oysters just the same, with one spoon of Worcestershire sauce and dash of red pepper.
A three-line skillet recipe that depends almost entirely on knowing when to stop. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: "cook until oysters curl"That is the whole timer, and it arrives fast — roughly 1 to 2 minutes over medium-high heat, as soon as the frilled edges pull back and the flesh firms. Another minute and they tighten into rubber and weep their liquor into the pan.
- A spiderOriginally a cast-iron skillet on three legs meant to stand over coals; by the early twentieth century the word was commonly used for any heavy frying pan. Use a cast-iron or heavy stainless skillet, well preheated, so the oysters sear rather than stew.
- "Wash, wipe and dry"This matters more than it sounds. Shucked oysters carry a great deal of liquor, and wet oysters dropped into butter will poach in their own juices instead of browning. Drain them, blot on paper towels, and add them in a single uncrowded layer.
- Quantity of oystersTwo dozen shucked oysters is roughly a pint, depending on size; the pint is the standard modern retail measure. If you have liquor in the container, save it for a chowder or sauce rather than pouring it into the pan.
- ButterTwo tablespoons for two dozen oysters is lean by modern habit and correct — more butter and the oysters simmer. Let the foam subside before the oysters go in.
- The deviled version"deviled" in this period generally means a sharpening with Worcestershire, mustard or cayenne; here it is Worcestershire and red pepper. Add the spoonful of Worcestershire at the very end, off the heat, so it glazes rather than boils away; "red pepper" in this period means cayenne, not paprika or crushed chile flake.
- YieldTwo dozen oysters on toast serves two as a light main course or four as a first course. Have the toast buttered and waiting — the oysters will not hold.
Panned oysters belong to the era when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury: Philadelphia, where Mrs. Wilson wrote, sat at the head of a Delaware Bay trade that put barrels of shucked oysters into every corner grocery and oyster cellar, and cooks needed a dozen quick ways to use a pint of them. "Panned" simply distinguishes the skillet treatment from the fried, scalloped, stewed and roasted versions that fill the same chapters. "Deviled" is the standard Victorian and Edwardian shorthand for anything sharpened with Worcestershire, mustard or cayenne — the term is generally traced to late eighteenth-century English usage for highly seasoned grilled meats, and by Mrs. Wilson's day it had been reduced to a reliable formula rather than a specific dish.