Broiled Oysters
Dry large oysters on a towel; sprinkle them with salt and pepper and lay them in an oyster broiler. Brown on both sides, serve on a hot plate with melted butter poured over them.
The oysters may be rolled in bread crumbs before broiling, if preferred.
A three-line recipe whose success rests almost entirely on two things: dry oysters and fierce, brief heat. Everything else is seasoning.
- Dry them properlyThis is the hinge. Shucked oysters carry a great deal of liquor, and wet oysters steam rather than brown. Drain them, spread them on a towel, and blot the tops as well; give them a few minutes to firm up before they go near the heat.
- The oyster broilerA hinged wire basket with two flat grids, clamped shut so the whole lot could be flipped over an open fire or coals at once. A folding fish grill does the same job on a grill; under a domestic broiler, use a preheated heavy pan or a rack set close to the element and turn each oyster with tongs.
- Heat and timingThe original gives none. Work as hot as the appliance allows and count on roughly a minute to a minute and a half a side. The oysters are done when the edges ruffle and curl and the surface is lightly coloured; past that they tighten into rubber.
- Which oysters"Large" here is doing the work of the loose trade grades sold by size, of which selects and counts were the bigger ones. Any large shucked oyster works; small ones shrink to nothing and fall through the wires.
- The crumb variationDry crumbs will not cling to a blotted oyster on their own. Dip the oyster in melted butter first, then in fine dry crumbs, and press them on. Crumbed oysters colour faster, so watch them closely.
- Salt with restraintOysters are already saline, and the seasoning is applied directly to the flesh rather than to a batter. A light hand here, with more pepper than salt, suits the dish better than a full seasoning.
- ServingHot plates matter more than usual, since broiled oysters cool within a minute. Melted butter poured over is the whole sauce; a squeeze of lemon and dry toast underneath are period-appropriate additions.
- YieldFigure six to eight large oysters a person as a first course, a dozen as a light main. A pint of shucked selects serves two to three this way.
Broiling was one of the standard four or five treatments American cookbooks gave the oyster around 1900, alongside stewed, fried, scalloped and raw on the half shell, and it added nothing but heat and butter. The purpose-built oyster broiler named here was a common wire-goods item of the period, and it belongs to a moment when oysters were cheap, plentiful and eaten in enormous quantity: East Coast beds were still producing at industrial scale, and canned and barrelled oysters travelled inland by rail. The Butterick Cook Book, published by the pattern company for a broad domestic readership, files the dish under Fish rather than giving oysters a chapter of their own, which is itself a sign of how ordinary they were on the table.