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To Fry Oysters
Mrs. D. Wadskier.
Use the largest and best oysters; lay them in rows upon a clean cloth and press another upon them, to absorb the moisture; have ready several beaten eggs; and in another dish some finely crushed crackers; in the frying pan heat enough butter to entirely cover the oysters; dip the oysters first into the eggs, then into the crackers, rolling it or them over that they may become well incrusted; drop into the frying pan and fry quickly to a light brown. Serve dry and let the dish be warm. A chafing dish is best.
A straightforward egg-and-cracker crust, and the instructions are sound; the two things that decide the outcome are how dry the oysters are and how hot the fat is.
- Dry the oysters properlyThe pressing between cloths is the hinge of the recipe. Wet oysters shed liquor into the fat, the crust slides off and the pan spits. Give them ten minutes between towels and blot again before breading.
- "Largest and best"Buy the biggest shucked oysters you can get, drained; in modern US trade terms that means selects or, larger still, counts. Figure 6 to 8 per person as a course, so a pint of shucked oysters serves three or four.
- Crushed crackersPeriod recipes mean plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine. Unsalted saltines or oyster crackers rolled to coarse sand are the closest match; panko browns faster and tastes different.
- Enough butter to coverThat is shallow deep-frying, and butter alone will brown and burn before the oysters are done. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up; keep the fat at 360-375F.
- "Fry quickly to a light brown"Two minutes total, turning once. An oyster held longer than that tightens into rubber; the crust should color before the interior loses its plumpness.
- Fry in batchesCrowding drops the fat temperature and steams the coating. Two layers deep is never right; leave space between them and let the fat recover between batches.
- "Serve dry" and the chafing dishDrain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp, and warm the serving dish. Chafing dishes were used both for cooking at table and for keeping food hot over a spirit lamp; the direction here is about serving the oysters warm, and a low oven at 200F does the same work.
Fried oysters belong to the decades when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury. Chicago, where The Home Cook Book was first published in 1874 as a charity project by local women, for the Home for the Friendless, sat at the end of the rail lines that carried barrels of Eastern and later Gulf oysters inland packed in ice, and mid-century American cookbooks treat them as an everyday protein: stewed, scalloped, in patties, and fried in cracker crumbs as here. The cracker crust is itself a period marker, since commercial soda and water crackers were among the first mass-manufactured foods in American kitchens and were used as breading, thickener and stuffing long before dried breadcrumbs were sold in boxes. The recipe is credited to Mrs. D. Wadskier, one of the many named contributors whose signatures gave the book its authority; charity compilations of this kind traded on the reputations of the women listed in them.