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Broiled Oysters
1 pint selected oysters ¼ cup melted butter ⅔ cup seasoned cracker crumbs Clean oysters and dry between towels. Lift with plated fork by the tough muscle and dip in butter, then in cracker crumbs which have been seasoned with salt and pepper. Place in a buttered wire broiler and broil over a clear fire until juices flow, turning while broiling. Serve with or without Maître d'Hôtel Butter.
A three-ingredient recipe whose whole difficulty is heat management: shucked oysters cook in about the time it takes to brown the crumbs, and a second too long turns them to erasers.
- The "14 cup" is a typoIt should read 1/4 cup melted butter. A quarter cup is ample to coat a pint of oysters if you dip rather than pour.
- A pint of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. Depending on grade, a pint holds somewhere around two dozen medium oysters, enough for three or four as a first course.
- "Selected"An old market grade meaning medium-large oysters, sorted by size — larger than "standards", smaller than "counts". Any medium shucked oyster works; very small ones will overcook before they colour.
- The tough muscleThe adductor, the pale firm nub where the oyster was attached to its shell. Lifting by it keeps the soft body intact.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge of the recipe. Oysters shed a great deal of liquor, and a wet oyster will steam its crumb coating off instead of browning. Drain, blot between towels, and coat just before cooking.
- "A clear fire"Coals burned down past the flame stage, so nothing flares onto the food. Under a modern broiler, preheat fully and set the rack 3 to 4 inches from the element; on a grill, wait until the coals are ashed over.
- The wire broilerA hinged double wire basket with a long handle, clamped shut so the whole batch turns at once. A hinged grill basket is the direct descendant; a heavy preheated pan under the broiler also works, turning once.
- Timing"Until juices flow" means about a minute a side, two to three minutes total. The edges will ruffle and the crumbs will colour; past that the oysters shrink and toughen.
- Maître d'Hôtel ButterElsewhere in the book: softened butter creamed with salt, pepper, lemon juice and chopped parsley, and set firm. A pat on each hot oyster melts into a sauce.
Broiled oysters belong to a moment when oysters were cheap and plentiful in the northeastern United States, sold shucked by the pint from barrels and carts and eaten, by most accounts, across a wide range of households — Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book appears to devote an entire run of recipes to them, fried, scalloped, panned, creamed and broiled, on the assumption that a cook would be handling them constantly through the cold months. The equipment tells you the date as clearly as the ingredients: a hand-held wire broiler held over open coals was a common method before gas ranges put a broiling compartment under or beside the oven, and Farmer's insistence on a "clear fire" is the old warning against smoke and flare-up from a fire not yet burned down. The crumb coating serves the same purpose here as in her fried oysters — it gives a slippery, quick-cooking morsel a surface that can take colour before the interior overcooks.