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Batter
⅛ teaspoon pepper 1 cup bread flour 3/4 cup milk 1 cup bread flour Beat eggs until light, add salt and pepper. Add milk slowly to flour, stir until smooth and well mixed. Combine Beat eggs until light, add salt and pepper. Add milk mixtures.
Fried Oysters. Philadelphia Relish Follow directions for Fried Oysters. Serve with Philadelphia Relish. 2 cups cabbage, finely shredded ¼ teaspoon mustard seed 2 green peppers, finely chopped 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon celery seed 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1/4 cup vinegar Mix ingredients in order given.
Three things sit together here: a frying batter, a direction to fry oysters in it, and a raw cabbage relish to serve alongside. The batter and the relish are each simple enough to work from once the proportions are read carefully.
- Batter proportionsA cup of bread flour to three-quarters cup of milk plus beaten eggs gives a coating batter roughly the thickness of heavy cream. Add the milk to the flour in a thin stream and beat smooth before the eggs go in, or the lumps will not come out.
- Bread flourBread flour here means a strong, high-protein white flour; the extra gluten helps the batter cling to a wet oyster. All-purpose works but gives a softer coat.
- The pepperA teaspoon and a half of pepper in a cup of flour would overwhelm the oysters entirely. Season the batter to taste, in the region of a quarter teaspoon, and salt it lightly since the oysters bring their own salinity.
- Frying the oystersDrain shucked oysters well and blot them dry before dipping, or the batter will slide. Fry in fat at 375F for one to two minutes, until the coating is set and pale gold; oysters held longer than that shrink and turn rubbery.
- Batch sizeFry a few at a time. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature and the batter absorbs grease instead of sealing.
- The relishPhiladelphia relish is uncooked: shredded cabbage and green pepper dressed with vinegar, brown sugar, salt and the two seeds. Mix it at least half an hour ahead so the cabbage softens slightly and the sugar dissolves.
- Mustard seed measureThe mustard seed quantity as printed reads oddly. A quarter teaspoon of whole yellow mustard seed suits two cups of cabbage; more than half a teaspoon begins to dominate the celery seed.
- YieldOne cup of flour makes enough batter for roughly a pint of oysters, which serves four as a course with the relish on the side.
Fried oysters were everyday food in the American Northeast when this book was compiled, when oysters were still cheap, abundant and sold by the barrel from Chesapeake and Long Island beds. They were battered and deep-fried, crumbed, or broiled, and the accompaniment was almost always something sharp and raw to cut the fat. Philadelphia relish belongs to that family of quick uncooked cabbage relishes, closer to a coleslaw dressed with vinegar and sugar than to the long-boiled canned relishes of the same era; the name attaches it to the city's well-known tradition of pepper hash sold alongside fried oysters and pepper pot from street stands and market stalls, though the connection is traditional rather than documented in the book itself.