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Panned Oysters
1 cup oysters
1 teaspoon parsley
1 tablespoon butter
Salt
White pepper
Toast
½ lemon
Drain and wash the oysters. Put the fat in the pan and when hot turn in the oysters, adding the juice of the lemon and the chopped parsley. The oysters should be left only until they are plumped and the gills are a little ruffled. They must not change color, or be fried in the least. Season with salt and white pepper and serve on toast. This recipe will serve three.
A three-minute dish that depends entirely on restraint at the pan. The original already gives the key instruction; the rest is mostly translation.
- The hinge: stop at the ruffleShucked oysters are done the moment the mantle edge (what the book calls the gills) crimps and the body plumps, usually 60 to 90 seconds in a hot pan. Past that they tighten, weep and turn to rubber, which is exactly what "must not change color, or be fried in the least" is warning against.
- Table grillA dish of this kind suits a chafing dish or table grill, cooked in front of guests, though the recipe itself specifies only a pan. Any wide skillet over medium-high heat does the same job; a small pan is better than a large one, since crowded oysters steam in their own liquor rather than searing.
- A cup of oystersRoughly 12 to 18 shucked oysters depending on size, or about a half pint by the modern jarred measure. Buy them refrigerated in their liquor rather than frozen.
- "Drain and wash"Period oysters arrived with grit and shell fragments. Modern shucked oysters need only a quick check by hand for shell; rinsing under the tap dilutes flavour, so drain and pick over instead. Reserve the liquor for a sauce or chowder.
- "Put the fat in the pan"The fat is the tablespoon of butter listed above. It is a scant amount for a cup of oysters; a second half-tablespoon at the end, swirled in off the heat with the pan juices, makes a better sauce for the toast.
- White pepperSpecified so no black flecks show against the pale oysters, a convention often seen in cookbooks of this period. Black pepper will do if appearance is not the point, though the flavour is not identical.
- ServingThree portions, as stated. The toast should be dry and firm enough to hold the liquor without collapsing; cut it before you start cooking, since the oysters will not wait.
- SourcingRaw and lightly cooked oysters carry a real risk from Vibrio bacteria for anyone with liver disease or a compromised immune system. Buy from a dealer who can show the harvest tag, and keep them cold until the moment they hit the pan.
Chafing-dish and table-grill cookery had a long vogue in American middle-class homes from the 1890s through the 1920s, and Butterick, a pattern company whose household books were aimed squarely at the aspiring housekeeper, published cookery among its household titles. The appeal was theatre: a small nickel-plated apparatus on the table, a dish assembled in front of guests, no servant required. Oysters suited it because they were cheap and abundant on both American coasts before the oyster-bed declines of the twentieth century, and because they cook faster than almost anything else you could put in a pan. "Panned" here means simply cooked quickly in a pan with butter, as distinct from the fried, scalloped, creamed and roasted preparations that fill the oyster sections of period cookbooks; the insistence that they must not brown marks it as the most delicate of the family.