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Oysters En Brochette
Take three dozen large oysters, three ounces of bacon cut into three dozen small, thin squares; also prepare six slices of toast. Long, slender, steel skewerssix or eight of them-will also be needed. String the oysters and bacon squares alternately on the skewers, being careful to run the latter through the hard part of the oysters. Place the skewers across a shallow baking-tin so that the oysters will hang down but not touch the bottom of the tin; leave spaces between the skewers so that the heat will extend evenly among them. Cook in a very hot oven five minutes. Place a skewer on each slice of toast. Pour the juice in the pan over the toast and serve immediately.
A straightforward broiled-oyster dish that needs almost no translation, though the oven heat and the skewers deserve a word.
- "A very hot oven"Read this as 475-500F, or better, use the broiler with the pan 4-5 inches from the element. The point is to crisp the bacon before the oysters give up their liquor and shrink.
- Five minutes is rightOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and they firm slightly. Longer than about five minutes and they tighten into rubber, which is the usual failure with this dish.
- The bacon is the problem, not the oystersMuch modern supermarket bacon is wet-cured and sliced thicker than the thin, dry-cured bacon this instruction assumes. Cut it very thin, or give the squares a brief pass in a dry pan first, so the fat has started to render before it goes on the skewer. Otherwise the oysters overcook waiting for the bacon.
- "The hard part of the oyster"That is the adductor muscle, the small firm disc where the oyster was attached to its shell. Skewering through it keeps the oyster from tearing apart as it shrinks.
- SkewersLong thin metal skewers, as specified; wooden ones will scorch at this heat and are too thick for the muscle. Suspending them across the rim of the pan is the whole trick, since it lets the fat drip clear and the oysters roast rather than stew.
- Quantities and yieldThree dozen oysters and three ounces of bacon on six toasts serves six as a first course, six oysters each. Buy shucked oysters by the pint; a pint holds roughly two dozen medium oysters, so plan on a pint and a half.
- The pan juicesThey are oyster liquor and bacon fat, and they are the sauce. Pour them over the toast the moment the skewers come out, and have the toast already cut and waiting.
En brochette simply means "on a skewer," and the phrase entered American cookbooks through the restaurant French that dominated menus in the late nineteenth century. Oysters were then cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, which is why a general-purpose domestic manual could call for three dozen of them and think nothing of it. Pairing them with bacon was a habit fixed in the name "angels on horseback" for the wrapped-and-broiled version, a dish British in origin and found in nineteenth-century English cookery; the skewered form here spreads the same bacon over more oysters, and the toast beneath catches the liquor that would otherwise be lost. The dish belongs to a period when a savoury on toast could serve as a first course, a supper dish or a chafing-dish entertainment, depending on the hour.