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Oyster Cutlets
Drain off the liquor and wash the oysters well. Put them into a saucepan over the fire and heat until the edges curl, being careful to stir all the time. Strain the liquor and chop the oysters. Rub together one tablespoon of butter and one heaping tablespoon of flour for each pint of chopped oysters. Add the oyster liquor and cook until quite thick. Then add the chopped oysters and the yolk of one egg, beaten well. After taking from the fire add one teaspoon of salt, one tablespoon of minced parsley and the juice of one-half lemon. Let stand until perfectly cold, and when stiff, mold into desired shape. Dip in crumbs, egg and crumbs again, then fry in deep fat. Serve with horseradish sauce.
This is a croquette in all but name: a stiff oyster-and-liquor panade, chilled hard, breaded and deep-fried. Everything depends on the binding paste being thicker than seems reasonable.
- The hinge: the paste must be very stiffOne tablespoon each of butter and flour per pint of chopped oysters is a thin ratio by modern croquette standards, and the mixture will only hold if the liquor is reduced hard and the sauce cooked until it pulls cleanly from the pan. If it slumps when cold, work in more roux or a spoonful of dry breadcrumbs rather than trying to shape a soft mass.
- Heating the oystersStop the moment the edges ruffle, roughly a minute over medium heat. They cook again in the fryer, and oysters held longer than that turn to rubber no matter how finely you chop them afterwards.
- Oyster liquorA pint of shucked oysters yields only a modest amount of liquor, and less again here since the recipe has you drain and wash the oysters first, plus what renders during heating. Strain it through a fine sieve or cloth for grit; if it is scant, top up with milk or cream rather than water.
- The egg yolkAdd it off the direct heat, or temper it with a spoonful of the hot sauce first. Dropped straight into a boiling sauce it scrambles and speckles the mixture.
- Chilling"Perfectly cold" means at least three hours in the refrigerator, and overnight is better. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan so it cools quickly and evenly; a warm centre is what makes cutlets burst in the fat.
- Breading and fryingCrumb, egg, crumb again as written, then chill the shaped cutlets another twenty minutes so the coating sets. Fry at 375F, a few at a time, for two to three minutes until deep gold.
- YieldA pint of chopped oysters makes about eight small cutlets, enough for four as a first course.
- Horseradish sauceNo sauce recipe is given here, so presumably one appears elsewhere in the book. Grated fresh horseradish folded into whipped cream with a little vinegar and salt is the period-appropriate version; jarred horseradish drained of its brine works.
Oysters were cheap, plentiful and eaten in enormous quantity in American and British cities through the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the period give many ways to stretch them: scalloped, in patties, in fritters, and shaped like this into "cutlets" that mimic a chop. The name is a borrowing from the French kitchen, where a *cotelette* is a rib chop; by the turn of the twentieth century English-language books were applying it freely to bound, breaded, fried mixtures pressed into a chop shape, sometimes with a bit of macaroni or a clove stuck in for a mock bone. The recipe is characteristic of the market for inexpensive domestic cookery: a cheap shellfish made to arrive at the table looking like meat.