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Oyster Dressing
20 oysters 4 cups bread crumbs 1/2 tablespoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 2 tablespoons butter Drain and rinse oysters with cold water. Put butter in saucepan with oysters and bring to boiling point; add bread crumbs and seasoning; mix carefully, so that oysters will not be broken.
A plain oyster stuffing of the sort meant to go into a roast fowl or to be baked alongside it. The whole thing hangs on not overcooking the oysters, which are already nearly done by the time they hit the crumbs.
- The hinge: barely cook the oysters"Bring to boiling point" means exactly that and no longer — the moment the edges ruffle, take the pan off the heat. Oysters held at a simmer for even a few minutes tighten into rubber, and they will get further cooking inside the bird.
- Twenty oystersTwenty shucked oysters is roughly a pint of meats with their liquor, around a pound, though the count per pint varies a good deal with size. A pint container from the fish counter is a reasonable substitute.
- Save the liquorThe recipe has you rinse the oysters, which throws away most of their flavor. Drain them over a bowl, rinse only if gritty, and moisten the crumbs with the reserved liquor — 4 cups of dry crumbs will otherwise be very dry.
- Bread crumbsMost likely soft crumbs torn or grated from day-old bread rather than the dry sandy kind sold in canisters. Four cups of soft crumbs is several slices of bread; dry commercial crumbs pack far denser and will make a paste.
- Half a tablespoon of saltThat is 1 1/2 teaspoons, which is heavy-handed for this quantity, especially with salted butter. Start with half and season at the end.
- Yield and what it fillsYield -- makes roughly five cups, enough to fill the neck cavity of a turkey or a small baking dish, and to serve six or so as a side.
- If you stuff a birdCool the mixture before it goes into the cavity, stuff loosely just before roasting, and take the stuffing to 165F on a thermometer. Baked separately in a buttered dish, 350F for 25-30 minutes covered, then uncovered to brown.
Oyster stuffing is one of the oldest American holiday habits, and it survived in cookbooks long after it stopped being cheap. Through the nineteenth century oysters were an everyday food along the whole Eastern seaboard — barrelled, pickled, and shipped inland by rail in enormous quantities — so packing a turkey with them was thrift rather than luxury. By the time this book appeared, the Chesapeake and New York beds had been badly overfished and oysters were sliding toward the treat status they hold now, though the recipe still reads as though a pint of them were nothing much. The tradition persisted all the same, and oyster dressing remains standard on Thanksgiving tables in the Gulf Coast and Louisiana, as well as around the Chesapeake and in New England.