Fried Oysters
Wash oysters, dry between towels. Season with salt and pepper, dip in flour, egg and then bread or cracker crumbs. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown. Drain well and serve, garnished with lemon and parsley.
A bare-bones frying formula of the kind that assumed the cook already knew how hot the fat should be and how briefly an oyster wants to stay in it. Two details carry the whole dish: dry oysters and fat that is genuinely hot.
- Dry them properlyShucked oysters carry a lot of liquor, and wet oysters will shed their coating in the fat and spit. Drain in a sieve, then blot between towels as directed until the surface is matte.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "deep hot fat" left it to the cook. For frying of this kind the usual modern target is about 375F, and the old bread-cube test (a cube browning in well under a minute) is a rough guide. Too cool and the crumbs soak; too hot and they colour before the oyster is heated through.
- TimingNinety seconds to two minutes is enough — the oysters are done the moment the crust is golden. Longer and they tighten into rubber and weep liquid into the coating.
- Cracker crumbsThe cracker crumbs offered as an alternative meant crushed soda or water crackers, which are drier and coarser than bread crumbs and give a sandier, sturdier crust. Saltines are the closest current equivalent; reduce the added salt if you use them.
- Breading orderFlour, then beaten egg, then crumbs. Thin the egg with a spoonful of water or milk so it coats rather than clings in ropes, and let the breaded oysters rest ten minutes before frying so the coating sets.
- Batch sizeFry six or eight at a time at most. A crowded pan drops the fat temperature sharply, which is the usual cause of greasy fried oysters.
- DrainingDrain on a rack over a tray rather than directly on paper; oysters sitting on paper steam their undersides soft.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. A pint of shucked oysters, depending on size and grade, will run roughly two dozen and serves three or four as a first course, two as a main dish.
Fried oysters belong to the long American period when oysters were cheap protein rather than a luxury: through the nineteenth century the beds of Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound and the Gulf supplied city markets in enormous volume, and oyster cellars, stands and saloons sold them fried, stewed and raw to all classes. That abundance is why a general-purpose cookbook of this sort treats fried oysters with no more ceremony than a paragraph — it expected every reader to know the dish. The lemon and parsley garnish is a familiar finish of the period. Overfishing and pollution eventually began to thin the great beds, and the price of the household oyster was on its way up.