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Oyster Dishes (Blazer then add half a dozen)
blazer, then add half a dozen eggs, beaten slightly with one-fourth a teaspoonful of salt and a dash of paprica. Stir and cook, and, when beginning to thicken, add half a pint of oysters, parboiled, "bearded," and cut fine. When scrambled, serve on sippets of toast, lightly spread with anchovy paste.
A fragment: the sentence begins mid-instruction, and the missing opening almost certainly called for butter melted in the blazer. Allow about a tablespoon or two before the eggs go in.
- The blazerIn a chafing dish the blazer is the upper pan that sits over the flame or over the hot-water bath. Any wide, heavy skillet over low heat does the same work; the point is gentle, controllable heat for eggs.
- Half a pint of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. Half a pint is one cup, roughly 8 to 12 medium oysters, or one standard small tub from a fish counter.
- "Bearded"Trim off the dark, frilly gill margin and any bit of tough muscle after parboiling. It is stringy and holds grit.
- ParboilingDrop the oysters into their own liquor or lightly salted water only until the edges ruffle, well under a minute. They are then cut fine and added to the eggs, where they cook again; anything longer and they turn to rubber.
- The hingeAdd the oysters only when the eggs are just beginning to set, and pull the pan off the heat while they still look slightly underdone. Oyster flesh sheds water as it heats, and eggs held too long over the flame will weep it back out.
- PapricaAn older spelling of paprika. A dash here is for warmth and color, not heat; a sweet, mild paprika is the sensible modern choice.
- SippetsNarrow fingers or small triangles of toast, cut from a thin slice with the crusts off. Spread them thinly with anchovy paste, which is salty enough that the quarter teaspoon of salt in the eggs is genuinely all that is wanted.
- YieldSix eggs and a cup of oysters serve three as a supper dish, or four at a chafing-dish table where other things are passed.
Chafing-dish cookery had a genuine vogue in America between roughly the 1890s and the 1910s, and books like this one were written for it: a spirit lamp, a plated pan, and dishes a hostess could finish in front of guests. Oysters suited it well. They were relatively cheap, sold shucked by the pint in Eastern cities, and needed almost no cooking, which suited a small flame. The anchovy paste under the toast echoes the English savoury habit, the same bottled relish that flavored savouries and potted meats, used here to season the plate rather than the pan. Scrambled eggs with oysters appears under various names in the period, sometimes as a chafing-dish supper, sometimes as a breakfast dish.