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Panned Oysters
Clean one pint large oysters. Place in dripping-pan small oblong pieces of toast, put an oyster on each piece, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake until oysters are plump. Serve with Lemon Butter.
Lemon Butter. Cream three tablespoons butter, add onehalf teaspoon salt, one tablespoon lemon juice, and a few grains cayenne.
A very short recipe that depends entirely on watching the oysters rather than the clock. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: "until plump"Oysters are done the moment they swell and their frills curl, roughly 3 to 5 minutes in a hot oven. Left longer they shrink, weep and turn to rubber, and the toast beneath them goes to paste.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only "bake." What is wanted is a hot oven -- around 450F in modern terms -- so the oysters set before the liquor runs out of them. A slack oven will simply stew them in their own juice.
- Dripping-panA shallow rimmed roasting pan. A modern half-sheet pan is the direct equivalent; the low sides matter, since anything deep traps steam.
- One pint of large oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A pint is roughly a dozen to twenty large or select oysters; the recipe gives no yield, but it would serve three or four as a first course.
- Drain them well"Clean" here means picking out shell fragments and grit. Drain the oysters properly before they go on the toast, or the liquor soaks straight through it.
- The toastCut fingers or small oblongs from firm white bread and toast them dry and crisp on both sides. Soft sandwich bread will not hold up under a hot oyster.
- Lemon Butter is not a sauceIt is a compound butter, creamed cold and dropped on the oysters as they come out of the oven so it melts over them. Add the lemon juice a little at a time to keep it from splitting, and keep it chilled until serving.
"Panned" in American cookery of this period meant cooked quickly in a shallow pan with little or no liquid, and panned oysters on toast were a standard chafing-dish and breakfast dish in the Northeast, where shucked oysters were cheap and sold by the pint. Oysters in this period were an everyday protein rather than a luxury.