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Fried Oysters (To fry oysters take two dozen)
To fry oysters, take two dozen large oysters (they are sold under different names and brands in different markets), drain off liquor; have prepared cracker dust (bought of any grocer, or made by crushing with rolling pin), mix well one tea-spoon salt, take one oyster at a time, roll in cracker dust, and lay on a meat board or platter by itself until all are so encased, and laid in rows; let remain fifteen minutes, now take the oyster first rolled in cracker dust and dip in beaten eggs (yolk and white beaten together), then the second oyster, and so on until all are dipped, then roll in cracker dust, following same order as before. Let them remain from half to three-quarters of an hour. It is important to follow the same order in each operation, to give the liquor of the oyster time to drain out and be absorbed by the cracker dust; now heat in a frying-pan one pound of clarified fat or lard; when the blue smoke arises (which indicates a heat of 375°, the proper cooking point), drop into it a peeled potato or piece of hard bread, hard bread, which has the effect of preventing the fat growing hotter, drop in the oysters very lightly, and when a light brown turn to brown the other side; and then remove to a colander to drain a moment, or lay upon a piece of brown paper, which will absorb the superfluous grease. The time for cooking is about three minutes. Serve while hot on a hot platter. Fried oysters, to be at their best, must be eaten as soon as cooked; and when a second supply is likely to be needed, it should be cooked while the first is being served and eaten. It is better not to touch the oysters with the hand, as it tends to make them tough; all the rolling and dipping may be done with a fork, without mangling the oyster.
A double-breaded oyster fry with an unusually methodical rest between coats. The order-keeping is the point of the method, and the frying temperature is the point of the result.
- The hinge: keep the sequenceThe instruction to always return to the oyster you coated first is not fussiness. It gives each one an equal rest so the liquor it gives up is absorbed into the crumb rather than steaming the coating loose in the fat. If you lose track, the last-coated oysters will shed their crust.
- Cracker dustThis is cracker meal — unsalted soda crackers or saltines crushed to a coarse sand. Commercial cracker meal is sold for exactly this, and panko is not a substitute here; it browns faster and gives a spikier crust than the dense shell this recipe wants.
- Chill during the restShucked oysters sitting on a board for the better part of an hour is a period habit rather than a good one. Do both rests on a tray in the refrigerator; the coating sets just as well and the oysters stay cold going into the fat, which helps them cook through without overcooking.
- 375F, measuredBlue smoke from lard is a rough and rather late signal — by the time fat is visibly smoking it is usually past 375F and beginning to break down. Use a thermometer. The potato or crust of bread does not actually stop fat from getting hotter; it only bubbles and tells you the fat is hot. Lower the burner instead.
- Fat and panA pound of lard is about two cups, enough for roughly half an inch of depth in a 10-inch skillet. Lard is still the best-flavored choice; refined peanut, sunflower or canola oil all work. Fry in two or three batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Three minutes is the outside limitLarge oysters in a hot fat are done in 90 seconds to two minutes, as soon as the crust is light gold. Held to three minutes they tighten and the liquor cooks out. Judge by color, not the clock.
- HandlingThe advice to use a fork throughout is sound in practice, though the reason given — that the warmth of the hand toughens the oyster — is folk explanation; rough handling that tears the flesh is the likelier culprit. Two forks, one for the dry crumb and one for the egg, keeps the breading from clumping.
- YieldTwo dozen large oysters serve three or four as a course, two as a supper with bread and butter. Drain on a rack over a tray rather than paper if you want to hold them a few minutes; paper traps steam under the crust.
Fried oysters belong to the decades when American oysters were cheap, enormously abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel — the 1880s and 1890s, when *The Dixie Cook Book* and its many regional cousins were compiled. The aside that oysters "are sold under different names and brands in different markets" reflects a real trade: shucked oysters were graded and sold as counts, extra selects, selects and standards, with the names varying by city and packer, so a recipe written for a national audience could not assume a size. The double-breading with cracker meal is a common nineteenth-century American treatment, though cracker-crumb coatings and cornmeal coatings alike turn up across the Chesapeake and the Gulf, and the insistence on eating them the moment they leave the fat is the same argument cooks still make. The temperature figure of 375 degrees is a small marker of the period's growing enthusiasm for numbers in the kitchen, at a time when a fat thermometer was probably not something most households could check it with.