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Panned Oysters
With a fork pressed into a butter ball, rub over the bottom of the hot blazer. Then cover the surface with small rounds of toast, and put one or two uncooked oysters on each round; cover, and cook until plump, dust with salt and pepper, and put a bit of butter on each oyster. Serve, when the butter has melted, with slices of lemon.
Panned Oysters with Maître d'Hôtel Butter.
Cook as before. Have ready two tablespoonfuls of butter beaten to a cream; add a few grains of salt and paprica, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and, by degrees, the juice of half a lemon. Spread upon the oysters before serving.
A chafing-dish dish from the era when the blazer sat at the table over a spirit lamp. It works over any low direct heat, but the timing is unforgiving: oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle.
- The hinge: cook to plump, not longerOysters need roughly two to three minutes over gentle heat. Once they have swelled and their frills curl, they are finished; another minute turns them tough and weeps liquor into the toast.
- The blazerThe blazer is the shallow upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame with the hot-water bath removed. A wide skillet or sauté pan over low heat does the same job.
- Butter ball on a forkA period trick for greasing a hot pan: spear a firm pat of butter and wipe it across the surface. About a teaspoon is enough — this is a film, not a fry.
- Drain the oystersShucked oysters carry a lot of liquor, and any that comes into the pan will soak the toast and steam rather than pan the oysters. Lift them out with a fork and let them drain a moment first.
- Toast roundsCut with a small biscuit cutter, about 1½ to 2 inches across, and toast them dry and firm on both sides. Soft toast collapses under the oyster.
- "Paprica"Simply paprika, a seasoning that was gaining ground in American cookery around this period. The book says only 'paprica'; plain sweet paprika is the sensible choice, as smoked paprika was not part of the period's pantry.
- Maître d'hôtel butterTwo tablespoons of butter creamed with parsley and lemon. Add the juice a few drops at a time and keep beating or the butter will break; it should stay a smooth spread, not a curdled sauce.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield or number of servings. Serve the instant the butter slackens, as the recipe directs -- these do not hold.
- SourcingBuy shucked oysters from a refrigerated case with a shellfish tag, use them the day you get them, and keep them cold until they hit the pan.
Chafing-dish cookery had a genuine vogue in America from the 1890s into the 1910s, promoted as the equipment of the bachelor, the college student and the hostess entertaining after the theatre when the kitchen staff had gone to bed. Oysters suited the format perfectly: they were cheap and plentiful along the Atlantic seaboard, they were sold already shucked by the pint, and they cook in the time it takes to fill the glasses. "Panned" here means cooked in a pan in their own moisture with a little butter, as distinct from the fried, scalloped or stewed oysters that fill the rest of the period's cookbooks. The ma tre d'h tel butter — creamed butter with parsley and lemon — is a borrowing from French restaurant practice, and it seems to have become widely familiar American cookbook vocabulary for finishing broiled fish, steak and shellfish.