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Oyster Sandwiches
Arrange fried oysters on crisp lettuce leaves, allowing two oysters for each leaf, and one leaf for each sandwich. Prepare as other sandwiches.
A three-line assembly note that assumes the reader already knows the book's fried oysters and its sandwich method. Fill in the two missing halves and this works as written.
- "Prepare as other sandwiches"The book's general sandwich directions call for day-old bread cut in thin even slices, with the butter spread on the end of the loaf before each slice is cut, and the crusts trimmed. That is the substance of the omitted instruction.
- The oystersFried oysters in this book are drained, dried, seasoned, dipped in crumbs, then egg, then crumbs again, and fried in deep fat until golden and drained. The book judges the fat by a bread-crumb browning test rather than a thermometer. They should be cooked through but no further; an oyster held in fat too long tightens and goes rubbery.
- Let them cool firstHot fried oysters steam the bread and wilt the lettuce within minutes. Drain them on paper and bring them to just-warm or room temperature before assembling.
- Size and countTwo oysters per sandwich implies a reasonably large oyster rather than the small grades sold for stews. A pint of shucked oysters will make roughly a dozen sandwiches, depending on size.
- DressingThe recipe gives only butter, but a thin film of mayonnaise or tartar sauce on the top slice is period-appropriate and keeps the crumb coating from tasting dry.
- Make to orderThese do not hold. The crumb crust soon softens against buttered bread, so assemble them close to serving rather than stacking them under a damp napkin.
Oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail through most of the nineteenth century, which is why a Boston cookbook of 1896 can treat them as an everyday sandwich filling rather than a luxury. Fried-oyster sandwiches belong to the same family as the New Orleans oyster loaf and the later po' boy, and to the era's fashion for the substantial sandwich at ladies' luncheons, card parties and railway buffets. Fannie Farmer's sandwich chapter is largely a set of variations on one buttered-bread technique, which is why this entry is so brief: the book expects you to have read the method once and to apply it to whatever the fish market had that morning. The collapse of the Atlantic oyster beds through overharvesting and pollution in the early twentieth century is a large part of why such casual use of oysters reads as extravagant now.