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PANNED OYSTERS (Take one-half pint of large)
Take one-half pint of large oysters; lay them in a shallow dripping-pan, and throw over them a small quantity of oyster juice, but not sufficient to raise or float them. Place the dish carefully in a hot oven and just heat the oysters through thoroughly, being sure not to bake them. Moisten some toast with the hot juice from the oysters and serve.
A three-ingredient dish where the only technique is restraint: the oysters are warmed, not cooked. Everything depends on pulling the pan the moment the edges ruffle.
- The hinge"Just heat the oysters through thoroughly, being sure not to bake them" is the whole recipe. Oysters toughen quickly once overcooked, so watch for the edges to curl and the flesh to turn opaque, then stop; in a hot oven this may be only a few minutes.
- Half a pint of oystersThat is one cup of shucked oysters, perhaps eight to a dozen depending on size. Enough for two people on toast.
- "A hot oven"Period books give no thermometer readings; a hot oven is usually read today as somewhere around 400 to 450F. The high heat is deliberate: it warms the oysters fast so they are done before their liquor boils away.
- Dripping-panA shallow metal roasting pan or a rimmed sheet pan. The point is that the oysters sit in a single layer in a thin film of liquor, not swimming — the recipe is explicit that the juice should not float them.
- Oyster juiceThe liquor in the tub or shell. If there is not much, do not top it up with water; the recipe asks only for enough to wet the pan without floating the oysters, and the toast is then moistened with the hot juice from the pan.
- SeasoningNone is given, perhaps because the oyster's own salinity was thought sufficient. Black pepper, a little butter and a squeeze of lemon at the table are in keeping with the style.
- The toastUse a firm white bread, toasted dry and hot. Warmed liquor soaks in almost instantly, so assemble and serve at once or the toast collapses.
- Buying oystersShucked oysters should smell of clean seawater and sit in clear, not cloudy, liquor. Keep them cold until the pan goes into the oven; brief warming does not compensate for oysters that have been left out.
Panned oysters belong to a large family of late-nineteenth-century American oyster preparations — panned, roasted, broiled, scalloped, fried, stewed — that filled the fish chapters of household cookbooks when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail from the Chesapeake and Long Island Sound. "Panned" simply meant cooked in a shallow pan with little or no added liquid, as distinct from stewing in milk or breading and frying. The bed of moistened toast is the standard nineteenth-century vehicle for anything served in its own juices, and it appears under creamed dishes and stewed shellfish throughout books of this era. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued cookery among a broader line of domestic manuals aimed at middle-class housekeepers. The dish itself is as plain as they come: it needed no special equipment, no sauce and almost no skill beyond knowing when to stop.