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Escalloped Oysters
Stir one cup of cracker crumbs into half a cup of melted butter. Heat half a cup of cream or strained oyster liquor in the blazer, put in a layer of oysters (about a cup), washed and drained, and sprinkle with a part of the prepared crumbs, salt and pepper; add another layer of oysters, the rest of the crumbs, and salt and pepper. Cover, and cook nearly ten minutes. Do not stir the oysters.
A chafing-dish dish written for a table-side alcohol lamp, which means gentle, indirect heat and a covered pan. Translated to a stovetop skillet it works, but the timing needs watching.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, used directly over the flame; the lower pan is a water bath. Over an alcohol lamp it heats slowly, which is why ten minutes is plausible here. In a covered skillet on a modern burner, keep the heat at medium-low and expect the oysters to be done in five to six minutes.
- Judging the oystersThe oysters are ready when the edges have ruffled and firmed and the liquor is hot through. Past that they tighten and weep, and the crumb layers turn to paste. Lift the lid and look rather than trusting the clock.
- Do not stirThis is the hinge of the recipe. Stirring breaks the oysters, muddles the crumb layers into the liquid, and turns a layered dish into a chowder. Shake the pan if you must move anything.
- Cracker crumbsThese are plain soda or water crackers crushed fine, not seasoned dry breadcrumbs and not panko. Unsalted saltines are the closest supermarket match; use a light hand with the added salt, since crackers and oyster liquor both bring their own.
- ButterHalf a cup of butter to one cup of crumbs is very rich by current taste and the crumbs will be saturated rather than crisp. Three to four tablespoons gives the same binding with a drier crumb.
- Straining the liquorOyster liquor almost always carries shell grit and sand. Strain it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter, and if you are using shucked oysters from a tub, save the liquid rather than pouring it off.
- YieldAbout a cup of oysters, washed and drained; that is roughly half a pint by measure, or a little more as sold in a tub of liquor. It serves two as a supper dish or four as a first course, and it does not hold well; serve it straight from the pan.
Escalloped oysters were standard American cooking for most of the nineteenth century, when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury, sold from barrels and street carts in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia and shipped inland by rail and barrel once ice made it possible. The usual version was baked in a deep dish; this one is adapted for the chafing dish, the fashionable equipment of the 1890s and early 1900s, when cooking at the table over a spirit lamp was the entertainment as much as the food. "Escalloped" and "scalloped" are the same word, often traced to the practice of cooking such mixtures in a scallop shell, though the derivation is not settled.