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Oyster Sandwiches
Place between two buttered slices of brown or white bread, two or three fried oysters,. They may be sprinkled with pepper, salt, horseradish, lemon juice, tabasco, worcestershire, or water-cress, according to the taste.
An assembly recipe rather than a cooking one — the whole thing hinges on oysters fried well and eaten at once. The book assumes you have already read its fried oyster directions.
- The frying is the recipeShucked oysters are patted dry, coated (egg and fine dry crumbs or cornmeal is the usual period treatment) and fried quickly in hot fat until the coating is golden and the edges just curl — a matter of a minute or two rather than longer. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber; the interior should still be plump. The book gives none of this here and assumes its own fried-oyster directions have been read.
- Oysters to buyShucked oysters sold in tubs in the refrigerated case are what you want; counts vary with grade and size, so buy by eye. Two or three per sandwich means a pint will cover roughly eight to a dozen sandwiches.
- Drain and salt the bread's sideSet the fried oysters on a rack, not paper, for the minute before assembly so the crust stays crisp, and butter the bread right to the edges. The butter is structural here: it keeps the oyster liquor from soaking through.
- "Brown bread"In an American book of 1911 this most often means a plain wholemeal or graham loaf rather than the steamed molasses Boston brown bread, though the text does not say which. A firm, close-crumbed loaf, cut thin, suits the sandwich best.
- Tabasco and WorcestershireBoth were long established by this date; a few drops of either is enough for two oysters. Horseradish here means freshly grated or bottled grated root, not the mayonnaise-based sauce.
- WatercressUsed as a filling rather than a garnish. Pick it over, dry it thoroughly, and lay a small handful in so it is pressed flat, or it will slide the top slice off.
- ServingMake these to order and serve within a few minutes. They do not hold, and they do not travel — the coating goes soft and the sandwich weeps.
The oyster sandwich belongs to the era when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury, sold from stalls and saloons by the plate and shovelled into bread as a matter of course. Its best-known relative is the New Orleans oyster loaf, a hollowed and buttered loaf packed with fried oysters, traditionally said to have been carried home by late-drinking husbands as a "peacemaker." That the Butterick Cook Book (published in 1911 by the Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator) gives the dish only two lines is itself telling: fried oysters were assumed knowledge, and the sandwich chapter existed mainly to catalogue combinations for luncheons, teas and picnic baskets. The long list of optional seasonings — pepper, horseradish, lemon, tabasco, Worcestershire, watercress — is characteristic of the period's sandwich writing, which treated the form as a framework to be varied rather than a fixed recipe.