No. 1061

Oysters Fried with Butter or Lard

Huitres Frites au Beurre ou au Saindoux

Fried Oysters With Butter.—Poach the oysters lightly in their own liquor, then drain and roll them in pulverized cracker-dust, dip them in beaten egg that has been mixed with a little milk seasoned with salt and pepper and strained through a strainer; roll them in bread-crumbs. Put some butter into a sautoire or frying-pan; when very hot lay in the oysters one beside the other, and as soon as they are fried nicely on one side, turn them over on the other when done; drain, and pile them on a folded napkin, and serve very hot.

Fried Oysters with Lard.—Drain medium-sized oysters; roll them in pulverized cracker-dust, then dip them in eggs to which have been added an equal quantity of oyster liquor and seasoned with salt and pepper, beaten well with a whisk and strained through a strainer. Roll them once more in the cracker-dust, shape them nicely, and plunge them into very hot lard; when a fine color, drain, besprinkle with a little table salt and dress on folded napkins.

← No. 1060 Fried Oysters a la Horly Oysters No. 1062 Oysters on Crusts →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two versions of the same idea from Delmonico's kitchen: a shallow-fried oyster in butter and a deep-fried one in lard. Both stand or fall on how briefly the oyster meets heat.

The hinge: barely poach"Poach lightly in their own liquor" means only a few moments, just until the edges ruffle; the recipe sets no time. An oyster held longer tightens into rubber, and it still has the frying to come.
Cracker dustFinely pulverized soda or oyster crackers, rolled or processed to a coarse flour. Modern saltines crushed fine work; panko is a different texture and will not sit as tightly against the oyster.
SautoireA straight-sided saute pan. The recipe calls only for "some butter" in the pan, very hot but not smoking; cutting the butter with a neutral oil is steadier, as whole butter browns fast at frying heat.
Lard temperatureThe book only says "very hot lard" and gives no figure; for deep frying this is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F. Below that the crust drinks fat; above it the coating colors before the oyster is warm.
Dry the oystersDrain them thoroughly on a towel before the first coat of cracker dust. Surface liquor is the usual reason breading slides off in the pan.
The egg washThe second version thins the egg with an equal volume of oyster liquor rather than milk, which is the more savory of the two. Straining is worth doing it removes the chalazae so the coat goes on evenly.
Folded napkinPeriod service: a linen napkin folded on the platter to absorb fat and keep the oysters from steaming on porcelain. A rack over a warm plate does the same work.
YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. Figure six to eight oysters a person as a first course; the recipe assumes shucked, medium oysters, so four servings is nearer a quart than a pint.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the working repertoire of Delmonico's in New York, and its oyster chapter runs to dozens of entries because oysters were then cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast sold from carts, cellars and saloons as well as from Ranhofer's dining room. The two variants here are often said to mark a distinction in nineteenth-century kitchens, butter being associated with restaurant cooking and lard, cheap and high-smoking, with household and street-stall frying, though the division was never as tidy as that. Serving fried food piled on a folded napkin was standard grand-service practice of the period, and Ranhofer specifies it constantly. The New York oyster beds that supplied all this were fished out and then closed to harvest by pollution in the early twentieth century.