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Broiled Oysters with Pork
String a hair-pin shaped wire, first with an oyster, then with a thin slice of pork, and so on until the wire is filled; fasten ends of wire into a long wooden handle, and broil before the fire. Serve, with the pork, if you like, seasoning slightly with pepper.
A fireside skewer dish written for a household with an open hearth and a scrap of wire. The method transfers directly to a broiler or grill, but the timing does not: everything here hinges on the oysters, which are done long before you expect.
- The hinge: two minutes, no moreOysters are cooked the moment their edges curl and they plump. Over a hot fire or under a broiler set high that is roughly 1-2 minutes a side. Anything longer and they shrink into rubber and weep out their liquor.
- The wire and handleA hairpin-shaped wire fixed into a wooden handle is an improvised hearth skewer, close in principle to a toasting fork. Flat metal skewers do the same job and stop the oysters spinning; if you use bamboo, soak them first and expect scorching. Two parallel skewers hold the pieces steadier than one.
- What "pork" means hereIn a book of this period this is most likely salt pork — cured fatback or belly, sliced very thin so the fat renders and bastes the oyster. Sliced bacon is the nearest supermarket substitute. If the pork is heavily salted, blanch the slices a minute in simmering water and pat dry, or the finished skewer will be too salty to eat.
- Cut the pork thinAbout 1/8 inch. Thicker slices will still be raw and flabby when the oysters are ruined; thin ones crisp in the same time the oysters take.
- Dry the oystersDrain shucked oysters and blot them well. Wet oysters steam rather than broil and will drip enough liquor to kill a fire or smoke up a broiler pan.
- Heat and distanceYou want fierce, close heat -- glowing coals, a hot grill, or a broiler rack set 3-4 inches from the element. A moderate heat cooks the oysters through before the pork colours.
- No quantities givenThe original assumes you fill the wire. Reckon on 6 oysters and 6 pork slices per person as a first course; a pint of shucked oysters is roughly 18-24 depending on size.
- ServingSlide the skewer contents onto buttered toast so the rendered fat and oyster liquor soak in, and grind pepper over at the table. Salt is almost never needed once salt pork is involved.
Threading oysters and pork alternately on a wire is the American hearth version of a very old idea -- the fat-and-lean skewer, which appears wherever a cook needs to keep something lean and quick-cooking from drying out over direct heat. The pairing of oysters with salt pork was practical rather than fancy: through the nineteenth century oysters were cheap and abundant along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and shipped inland by barrel and rail, while salt pork was the fat every household already had in the cellar. Oysters were then closer to everyday provision than luxury. The instruction to broil "before the fire" rather than over it is a reminder of how the recipe was actually executed -- held upright at the mouth of an open hearth, drippings falling clear of the coals, a hearth method that seems to have survived alongside the closed ranges already common by that date.