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Oyster Sandwiches
Place two or three fried oysters between two buttered slices of brown or white bread. They may be sprinkled with pepper, salt, horseradish, lemon-juice, tabasco, Worcestershire, or watercress, according to taste.
An assembly recipe rather than a cooking one: it assumes you already have fried oysters on hand, which is where all the work and all the judgment sit.
- The oysters come firstThe recipe assumes fried oysters are already to hand and says nothing about how to fry them. The usual approach is shucked oysters patted dry, dredged in flour then egg then cracker crumbs or cornmeal, and fried hot and fast until the coating is golden; overcooked, the oyster tightens into rubber inside its crust.
- Serve them hot, build fastFried oysters lose their crispness within a few minutes of meeting buttered bread. Fry, drain briefly on a rack rather than paper, and assemble as you eat.
- "Brown bread"Here this most likely means whole-wheat or graham bread rather than the steamed molasses Boston brown bread. Either works; a firm sandwich loaf holds up better than a soft one under the oyster juices.
- Butter both slicesNot decoration: butter acts as a moisture barrier between the oysters and the bread, and the recipe does specify buttered slices.
- Horseradish and WorcestershireSprinkling either directly, as written, gives an uneven bite. Mixing them into the butter, or into a little mayonnaise, distributes the seasoning and is closer to how the same combination is dressed today.
- QuantityThe recipe calls for two or three oysters per sandwich, modest by modern eyes. If you want a fuller sandwich, four to six medium oysters on a standard slice is closer to current expectation; allow a pint or more of shucked oysters for four such sandwiches.
- Buying oystersShucked oysters sold in tubs are graded by size; select or standard are the right scale for frying. Keep them refrigerated, drain well, and use within a day or two of purchase.
Fried oysters between bread was ordinary American eating long before it was fashionable. Oysters were cheap and abundant in Atlantic and Gulf ports through the nineteenth century, sold from carts and cellar oyster saloons, and the fried-oyster sandwich belongs to that street-food setting well before it appears in tidy sandwich chapters like this one. In New Orleans the same idea, piled into a hollowed loaf, is the oyster loaf, and fried oysters became one of the standard po-boy fillings; versions of the fried-oyster sandwich are equally at home in Baltimore and along the Chesapeake. What is interesting about this version is the list of optional seasonings, which reads like an inventory of a well-stocked bottled pantry: tabasco and Worcestershire, prepared horseradish, a lemon.