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Fried Mussels
Pick some mussels out of their shells: remove their beards, dip them in milk, cover with breadcrumbs well seasoned with salt and pepper, and fry in a fryingpan until they are of a light brown color, place them on a dish in a warm place, pour a little of their liquor in a pan, add a little pepper and salt, if required, and sprinkle in a few breadcrumbs, and then add a little butter. When it is quite hot pour it over the mussels and serve at once. The mussels may be previously pickled, but it is not necessary.
Oscar's instructions begin after the hard part is done, so the first step is the one you have to supply yourself. Everything else is a straightforward crumb-and-fry.
- Opening themThe recipe assumes you already have shucked mussels and their liquor, which means steaming them first: rinse and scrub, pull off any beards, then cover and steam over high heat with a splash of water or wine for 3-5 minutes until the shells gape. Discard any that stay shut, and any that were already open and would not close when tapped before cooking.
- The beardThe "beard" is the byssus, the tuft of fibres the mussel uses to anchor itself. Pinch it and pull it toward the hinge; it is tough and unpleasant, but harmless if a strand escapes you.
- Save the liquorThe pan sauce depends entirely on the steaming liquid, so strain it through a fine sieve or cloth to catch grit and sand. Farmed rope-grown mussels give a cleaner liquor than wild ones.
- Milk and crumbsA dip in milk alone gives a thin coating that sheds in the pan. Flour the mussels lightly first, then milk, then seasoned dry crumbs, and press the crumbs on firmly.
- FryingShallow-fry in about a quarter inch of clarified butter or neutral oil at 350-360F. Cooked mussels only need to brown, roughly a minute a side; longer and they shrink and go rubbery.
- SaltMussel liquor is naturally salty. Season the crumbs, then taste the reduced liquor before adding any more salt to the sauce.
- The sauceA few crumbs stirred into the hot liquor is an old thickener that works, but keep it to a scant tablespoon or the sauce turns pasty. Whisk the butter in off the heat so it emulsifies rather than splitting.
- "Previously pickled"Cooked mussels kept in spiced vinegar were familiar in Victorian kitchens, and that is the likeliest reading of the line. Whether the habit was chiefly about keeping them or about the flavour is not something the recipe says; either way, the vinegar will sit awkwardly against the buttery sauce.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Two pounds of mussels in the shell yields roughly a cup of meats, enough for two as a first course. Fry and sauce them at the last minute; the crust does not hold.
Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel who put his name to this 1896 collection, ran a dining room where oysters were the prestige shellfish and mussels were emphatically not. Mussels were plentiful and cheap along the Atlantic coast and were regarded in nineteenth-century America as poor men's food or bait, while in France and Belgium they were long established on restaurant menus. Tschirky himself was Swiss-born, at Le Locle in 1866, but emigrated as a teenager and learned his trade in New York, at the Hoffman House and Delmonico's. The frying and crumbing here, and the little sauce built from the shellfish's own liquor thickened with breadcrumbs, suggest continental technique; the offhand note that the mussels "may be previously pickled" may well be a survival from an older era of keeping cooked shellfish in spiced vinegar before refrigeration made that unnecessary in a hotel kitchen.