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Broiled Devilled Oysters
Thoroughly wipe on a cloth twenty-four large, freshly opened oysters, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly roll in devilled butter, roll in bread crumbs, place on a double broiler and broil for five minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish over six toasts, spread a maitre d'hotel butter over and serve.
A Delmonico-style savory that depends on two compound butters the book expects you to already have, and on a cooking time that will ruin the oysters if you take it literally.
- The hinge: broiling timeFive minutes a side will shrink large oysters to rubber. Shucked oysters are done the moment the edges ruffle and they plump — roughly a minute to two minutes a side under a hot broiler element, watching them rather than the clock.
- Devilled butterIn kitchens of this period that meant softened butter worked with mustard (dry or Dijon), cayenne, and often a little Worcestershire or anchovy. Roughly 4 tablespoons butter to 2 teaspoons mustard and a good pinch of cayenne will coat two dozen oysters.
- Maitre d'hotel butterSoftened butter beaten with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper — served cold in slices or dabs so it melts over the hot oysters. It is a finishing butter, not a sauce to be heated.
- Double broilerA hinged wire basket that clamps food between two grids so it can be turned in one motion over coals. A flat wire rack set on a sheet pan under a modern broiler does the same job; turn the oysters with tongs.
- SeasoningA full teaspoon of salt for 24 oysters is heavy given that the oysters carry their own liquor and the devilled butter is already seasoned. Half that is closer to modern taste, and can be adjusted after tasting one.
- Drying mattersThe instruction to wipe the oysters on a cloth is not fussiness — surface moisture keeps the butter and crumbs from adhering and makes them steam rather than brown. Pat them genuinely dry.
- YieldSix toasts and 24 oysters gives four oysters per slice; serve as a first course or savory for six, or as a light main for three.
"Devilled" in Anglo-American cooking simply meant seasoned hot — mustard, cayenne, sometimes anchovy or Worcestershire — a usage current in England by the early nineteenth century and applied indiscriminately to kidneys, bones, crab, ham and oysters. The dish belongs to the era when oysters were cheap, abundant and eaten by the dozen in American cities, and when hotel and club kitchens turned them out broiled, fried, stewed, scalloped and pickled in endless variation. The pairing of a spiced butter for cooking with a plain parsley-and-lemon maitre d'hotel butter for finishing is characteristic of the French-trained restaurant cooking that shaped books like this one, where compound butters were kept ready in the larder and named on the menu as a matter of course.