No. 1060

Fried Oysters a la Horly

Huitres Frites a la Horly

Poach some medium sized oysters in their own liquor, drain and suppress the hard parts; wipe them in a cloth, and lay them in a vessel to season with salt and pepper, adding parsley, chopped mushrooms, lemon juice and a little oil; let marinate for two hours; now dip them in fine frying batter (No. 137), into which has been mixed well beaten egg-whites; immerse each oyster into this paste and plunge them at once into very hot fat; fry them a fine color, drain, salt, and dress them on a folded napkin. Set a bunch of fried parsley on top and quartered lemons around; to be served with a separate sauce-boat of light tomato sauce (No. 549).

← No. 1059 Broiled Oysters, Maitre d'Hotel and on Skewe Oysters No. 1061 Oysters Fried with Butter or Lard →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's method is a two-stage one: the oysters are poached and trimmed before they ever meet the batter, which is what keeps them from weeping into the coating. The hinge is the poach — it should be seconds, not minutes.

Poach barely at allBring the oysters and their liquor just to a bare simmer and pull them the moment the edges ruffle, about 30 seconds to a minute. Anything approaching a quarter hour turns them to rubber, and they will be cooked again in the fryer.
"Suppress the hard parts"Trim off the tough adductor muscle and any gritty beard after poaching. This is the part that goes leathery in hot fat.
Marinate coldThe recipe's two-hour marinade would have been done in a cool pantry; cooked shellfish is better kept in the refrigerator. Keep it covered, and drain and blot well before battering or the batter will slide.
The batter (No. 137)Ranhofer's frying batter is a light flour-based coating batter (the numbered cross-reference is not reproduced here); the recipe has stiffly beaten whites folded into it just before use, which is what makes it puff. Fold gently and use it quickly — a whipped batter deflates fast.
Fat temperatureThe book gives no number; 'very hot fat' is usually read today as somewhere around 350-375F. Cooler and the batter absorbs grease before it sets; hotter and it colors before the puff has time to expand. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
Fried parsleyUse dry, curly parsley sprigs and drop them into the same fat for a few seconds only, until they stop hissing and turn a vivid dark green. Wet parsley will spatter violently.
PresentationThe folded napkin was a service convention for absorbing fat; a rack or a paper-lined dish does the same work. Salt immediately out of the fryer, while the surface is still damp.
YieldFigure six to eight oysters per person as a first course. The recipe scales freely, but the batter should be mixed for the quantity you will fry within a quarter hour.

A Little History

"À la Horly" is one period spelling of what most French kitchens wrote as à l'Orly — a garnish name attached to any small item marinated, dipped in a light frying batter, deep-fried and sent out with tomato sauce, most often applied to fillets of sole. The origin of the name is disputed and generally traced, without documentation, to one or another Orly family or place-name; cooks of the period used it simply as shorthand for the method. Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) collects that restaurant's repertoire, which is why an oyster dish carries a French garnish name and a cross-referenced batter and sauce: the book is written as a working system, with numbered components a professional brigade would already have on hand. Oysters appear in enormous variety here because they were still cheap and abundant in New York waters, and a fashionable restaurant was expected to offer them a dozen ways on the same card.