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Broiled Oysters
Drain the oysters well and dry them with a napkin.
Have ready a griddle hot and well buttered; season the oysters; lay them to griddle and brown them on both sides. Serve them on a hot plate with plenty of butter.
Four sentences of instruction, and nearly all the difficulty is in the first one. Shucked oysters carry a great deal of liquor, and wet oysters steam rather than brown.
- Dry them properlyDrain in a sieve, then blot between towels until the surface looks matte. Any film of liquor on the oyster will flash to steam on the hot iron and the browning the recipe asks for will never happen.
- Use large oysters"Selects" or larger, if you can get them; small ones overcook before they colour. The recipe gives no quantity, but reckon roughly 6 to 8 good oysters per person, which makes a pint of shucked oysters two or three first-course servings depending on their size.
- Griddle heatA heavy cast-iron griddle or skillet over medium-high, hot enough that a drop of water skitters. Butter it just before the oysters go on; butter left on a hot surface will brown and then burn before you have laid them out.
- TimingAbout a minute a side, two at the outside. The oyster is done the moment its edges ruffle and it firms slightly; past that it tightens into rubber, which is the usual fate of a cooked oyster.
- SeasonThe recipe leaves this to the cook. Salt and pepper are the obvious reading, and period oyster receipts often add a little cayenne. Salt lightly -- oysters bring their own -- and season just before they hit the pan rather than in advance, which draws out more moisture.
- Don't crowdWork in batches with space between each oyster. A crowded griddle drops in temperature and the pooled liquor undoes the drying you have just done.
- Serving"Plenty of butter" means the plate is dressed with melted butter, and the plate must be genuinely hot. Buttered toast underneath is a common period accompaniment for broiled oysters and catches the juices, though this receipt does not call for it.
The Home Cook Book came out of Chicago in the mid-1870s, compiled from contributions by local housewives and sold for charity -- often cited among the earliest of the American community cookbooks. Oysters appear all through it, and through nearly every American book of the period, because they were then a cheap staple rather than a luxury: the Chesapeake and Long Island beds were being worked hard, and iced barrels and cans travelled inland by rail, so a Chicago kitchen could count on oysters in a way that would have been impossible a generation earlier. Broiling them dry on a griddle, as opposed to frying in crumbs or stewing them in milk, was the plainest treatment in the repertoire and the one that assumed the best oysters.