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PANNED OYSTERS (Drain and wash sufficient)
Drain and wash sufficient oysters for the number of persons to be served. Put a tablespoon of butter in the blazer and when hot turn in the oysters, adding the juice of a half lemon and a teaspoon of chopped parsley. The oysters should be left only until plumped and the gills a little ruffled. They must not change color, or be fried in the least. Season with salt and white pepper and serve on toast.
A chafing-dish recipe that lives or dies on timing: the oysters are barely cooked, and the whole thing takes about two minutes once the butter is hot.
- The blazerThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish, set directly over the flame rather than over the hot-water bath below it. A small heavy skillet over medium-high heat does the same job.
- QuantityThe recipe leaves the count to the cook; something like 6 to 8 shucked oysters per person suits a light course. Cook in a single uncrowded layer, which in a blazer or an 8-inch pan usually means no more than about two servings at once.
- "Until plumped and the gills a little ruffled"This is the hinge of the recipe and the only doneness cue you need. The mantle edge curls and the body firms in roughly 60 to 90 seconds; another minute and the oysters shrink and turn rubbery.
- "Must not change color"Most likely a warning against browning the oysters or the butter, though it may equally mean the oysters should barely lose their translucency. Either way, pull the pan the moment the liquid clouds and the edges frill.
- Drain and washShucked oysters sold in liquor should be lifted out and drained well; excess liquor will steam rather than pan them. Reserve it for a sauce or soup rather than adding it here.
- White pepperConventionally used in pale dishes so no dark specks show. Black pepper will do if appearance is not a concern, though the flavor is not quite the same.
- ServingHave the toast cut and ready before the oysters go in, since there is no time to make it afterward. Spoon the buttery pan juices over the toast as well.
The chafing dish had a long vogue in American middle-class homes from the 1880s through the 1910s, and cookbooks of the period often gave it a chapter of its own. It was the equipment of late suppers, bachelor apartments and after-theater entertaining: a spirit lamp, a water pan, and a blazer meant a hostess could cook at the table without a kitchen or a servant. Oysters suited it perfectly, being cheap and widely available at the time and needing almost no cooking, and "panned oysters" — briefly turned in butter as distinct from fried, scalloped, or stewed — was among the standard chafing-dish repertoire alongside Welsh rarebit and creamed lobster. The warning that the oysters must not "be fried in the least" reads as a period-typical corrective, aimed at cooks accustomed to the heavier fried and stewed treatments common in nineteenth-century oyster cookery.