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Fried Oysters (Drain carefully remove all)
Drain carefully, remove all bits of shell, and sprinkle with pepper and salt, and set in a cool place for ten or fifteen minutes. Then, if oysters are small, pour them into a pan of crackers rolled fine, add the liquor, mix well, and let stand five minutes, add a little salt and pepper, mold into small cakes with two or three oysters in each, roll in dry crackers until well encrusted, and fry in hot lard and butter, or beef-drippings. Serve hot in a covered dish. Or, dip the oysters in the yolk of eggs, well seasoned and beaten, then in corn meal with a little baking powder mixed with it, and fry in hot lard like doughnuts; or if you have frying basket, place them on that and drop it in the hot lard. Test the heat as for doughnuts.
Or, drain thoroughly, put in a hot frying-pan, turn so as to brown on both sides. They cook in this way in a few moments, and the peculiar flavor of the oysters is well preserved. Serve on a hot covered dish, with butter, pepper and salt, or add a little cream just before serving, and serve on toast; or take two parts rolled crackers and one part corn meal, mix well, roll the oysters in it, and fry in equal parts butter and lard. Season with salt and pepper.-Mrs. W. W. Woods.
Four methods in one entry: cracker-bound oyster cakes, an egg-and-cornmeal fry, a dry pan-sear, and a cracker-cornmeal crust. All of them depend on the same thing, and the original mentions it four times without emphasis.
- Dry oysters firstEvery version begins with draining, and the wet ones are what make coating slide off and fat spit. Lay the shucked oysters on a towel and blot the tops as well; the ten or fifteen minutes in a cool place after salting is partly there to draw out surface moisture.
- "Crackers rolled fine"This means plain soda crackers crushed to crumbs; saltines are the nearest modern equivalent, though they may well be saltier than the cracker meant here, so taste before adding more salt. Panko is not a substitute here; it fries lighter and will not bind the cakes.
- Frying temperatureThe book gives no number, only "test the heat as for doughnuts"; by modern practice that points to the usual deep-frying range, roughly 365-375F, hot enough that a crumb browns in under a minute. Below that the crust absorbs fat; much above it and the coating colors before the oyster heats through.
- FatsLard and beef drippings both work and both have high smoke points; a neutral oil with a spoonful of butter added at the end gives a similar result. Butter alone will burn at frying temperature.
- Cooking timeAn oyster is done when the edges ruffle and the flesh firms — roughly 1 to 2 minutes total in hot fat, or under a minute a side in the dry pan. The book's "few moments" is accurate and should be taken literally; longer and they tighten and weep liquid into the crust.
- The dry pan methodThis is essentially a sear in a very hot skillet with no added fat. Use cast iron, get it properly hot, and do not crowd the pan or the oysters will steam in their own liquor instead of browning.
- Baking powder in the cornmealAbout a teaspoon per cup is the right order of magnitude; the original gives none. It puffs the coating slightly. The doughnut references in the original are about frying in deep hot lard and how to judge its heat.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A pint of shucked oysters — 20 to 25 small ones — is a sensible batch and serves three or four, or makes about eight of the cakes at two or three oysters each.
Fried oysters were widely eaten in nineteenth-century America, and rail and ice made shucked oysters shippable well inland; barrels and cans of them reached kitchens far from any coast, which is part of why an oyster chapter of this length appears in a book called The Dixie Cook-Book. Cracker crumbs were a common American coating alongside dried breadcrumbs, and the last variant combines them with corn meal. Note that the entry offers a browned-in-a-dry-pan option specifically to preserve "the peculiar flavor of the oysters" -- a nineteenth-century acknowledgement that a heavy crust hides what you paid for. Like much of this book, the recipe is credited to a contributor, Mrs. W. W. Woods, in the manner of community cookbooks.