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Oyster Cromeskies
Scald the oysters in their own liquor over a quick fire. When plump wrap each oyster in a slice of bacon, and fasten with a small skewer (wooden toothpick). Sauté in the blazer, heated very hot. Serve on thin rounds of toast. These cromeskies are most easily cooked in a double broiler, resting on a dripping-pan, in a hot oven.
A two-ingredient chafing-dish savoury that lives or dies on timing: both oyster and bacon cook in about the same brief window, and overshooting it gives you rubber in a leathery wrapper.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, used directly over the flame without the hot-water bath beneath. Any heavy skillet stands in for it.
- Scalding the oysters"When plump" is the whole instruction and it happens fast — 30 to 60 seconds in their own liquor over high heat, just until the edges ruffle. Drain them well or the bacon will never crisp.
- Bacon thicknessUse thin-cut streaky bacon and stretch each slice with the back of a knife before wrapping. Thick-cut modern bacon will still be flabby by the time the oyster is spoiled.
- "Double broiler"This means a hinged wire broiler — two grids that clamp the food between them — not a double boiler. Set over a dripping-pan it catches the bacon fat. A wire rack over a sheet pan does the same work.
- Hot ovenRead "hot oven" as roughly 400-450F. Around eight to ten minutes, turning once, should be enough to crisp the bacon, though the recipe gives no time.
- ToothpicksSoak wooden picks in water first if they are going into a hot oven, and count them out before serving so none reach a guest's plate.
- Toast roundsCut the rounds slightly wider than the oysters and toast them dry and firm; a soft round collapses under the fat that renders out.
- YieldA pint of shucked oysters gives roughly 18–24 pieces, enough for six as a savoury or four as a first course. They must go to the table hot — they are unpleasant the moment they cool.
Cromeskies — also spelled kromeskies or kromeski — entered English cookery from Polish and Russian kitchens by way of French professional practice, and the name is generally traced to a Slavic word for a small slice or morsel. In their fuller Victorian form they were croquette mixtures wrapped in calf's caul or bacon and deep-fried; here the mixture is dispensed with entirely and the oyster stands alone, which makes the dish a near twin of the English savoury called angels on horseback. That simplification suits the setting: chafing-dish cookery was a craze in American parlours around the turn of the twentieth century. Oysters were then cheap and abundant on both American coasts.