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Fricasseed Oysters
Mrs. W. P. Brown.
For a quart can, drain the oysters dry as possible; put a piece of butter the size of an egg into your spider, and let it get quite brown; put in your oysters and as soon as they commence to cook, add as much more butter, which has been previously well mixed with a tablespoon of flour; let it cook a moment and add one egg, beaten with a tablespoon of cream; let this cook a moment and pour all over toasted bread.
A quick pan dish that lives or dies on timing: from the moment the oysters hit the butter to the moment it goes over toast should be about three minutes.
- SpiderA spider is a cast-iron frying pan, originally with short legs for standing over hearth coals. Any heavy skillet works; the weight matters because you want the butter to brown evenly without scorching.
- A quart can of oystersRoughly 2 lb of shucked oysters in their liquor, about 24 to 36 depending on size. Sold today in pint and quart tubs in the refrigerated case; a quart serves four over toast.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. The recipe calls for that amount twice, so budget a full stick (4 oz) in all.
- Drain them dryThis is the instruction that makes the dish. Wet oysters drop their liquor into the browned butter and you get pale poached oysters in thin broth instead of a fricassee. Drain in a sieve, then blot. Save the liquor for another use rather than adding it here.
- Cooking timeOysters are done when the edges ruffle and they plump slightly, one to two minutes. Some period recipes cook them considerably longer, which turns them to rubber. Judge by the edges, not the clock.
- Browning the butter"Quite brown" means nut-brown and fragrant, not black. Watch it closely and pull the pan the moment the milk solids color, since it goes from brown to burnt in seconds.
- The egg and creamOne egg beaten with a tablespoon of cream is a liaison, not a custard. Lower the heat before it goes in and keep the pan moving; if the sauce boils, the egg will scramble and break the sauce.
- ServingSpoon the oysters and sauce over toast, allowing about a slice per person. The original names no seasoning at all, so salt and pepper at the end are the modern cook's addition.
Fricassee in nineteenth-century American usage meant almost anything cut up and cooked in a pan with its own sauce, thickened with flour and often finished with egg and cream. Applying it to oysters made sense in a period when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by the barrel and the can. Chicago, where The Home Cook Book was compiled in the 1870s to raise money for the Home for the Friendless, sat on the rail lines that carried Eastern and Gulf oysters west, and canned and "tub" oysters appear elsewhere in the book. The attribution to Mrs. W. P. Brown is characteristic: the book was assembled from contributions by named local women, which is why measurements arrive as "a piece of butter the size of an egg" and vessels are named the way they were named in the contributor's own kitchen.