No. 1057

Oysters Baked, a la Crane

Huitres au Gratin a la Crane

Lay in a deep dish fit to be placed in the oven, a bed of medium sized drained oysters; season with salt, pepper, and a few small pieces of butter; sift over some fresh bread-crumbs, and pour in a little sherry wine and some of the oyster liquor; repeat the same operation until the dish is full, then besprinkle the whole with bread-crumbs; scatter small pats of butter here and there, and set the dish into a hot oven for ten to fifteen minutes to bake them a fine color, then serve.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A layered oyster gratin from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), which assumes a coal range and shucked oysters by the quart. The whole dish depends on not overcooking the oysters while the crumbs brown.

Oven temperaturePeriod "hot oven" guidance varies, but roughly 400-450F is the usual modern reading. The recipe allows ten to fifteen minutes, about as long as the oysters can take before their edges tighten.
Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given. As a starting point, a deep 8-by-10-inch baking dish will hold about a quart of shucked oysters (roughly 24-36 medium), with something like 1 1/2 cups of fresh crumbs, 4 tablespoons of butter and 1/4 cup of sherry; enough for four to six.
Drain, then reserve"Drained oysters" matters: excess liquor floods the crumbs and the dish steams instead of browning. Strain the liquor and add it back sparingly; the recipe asks only for "a little" sherry and "some of the oyster liquor."
Fresh bread-crumbsMost likely soft crumbs from a day-old white loaf rather than dry packaged crumbs. Dry crumbs absorb more liquid and give a sandy, pasty layer.
SherryUse a dry or medium sherry, not a sweetened cooking sherry. A little goes a long way against oyster liquor already carrying its own salt.
Salt with restraintOysters and their liquor are salty on their own. Season the layers lightly and taste the liquor first.
Depth of layeringKeep to two or three layers at most. A deep dish packed to the rim will still be cold in the center when the top is the "fine color" called for.
Oysters and their timingModern practice is emphatic that oysters need only a few minutes of heat. Judge doneness by the crumbs and the bubbling edges, and pull the dish as soon as it is colored.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for roughly thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its oyster chapter runs to dozens of preparations because oysters were then cheap, abundant and eaten in enormous volume in New York, dredged from beds in the Hudson and off Staten Island and Long Island. Titles like "a la Crane" are often said to follow the restaurant convention of naming a dish for a patron or a colleague; the individual so honored, if there was one, is generally not identifiable now, and Ranhofer rarely explained his dedications. What the recipe does record plainly is the American taste for the oyster gratin -- oysters, crumbs, butter and a fortified wine, baked hot and fast -- a formula that appears in dozens of nineteenth-century cookbooks and survives as scalloped oysters on holiday tables today.