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Broiled Oysters, Celery Sauce
Wipe on a cloth thirty-six large, freshly opened oysters. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn oysters in seasoning, then roll in bread crumbs, arrange on double broiler and broil for four minutes on each side. Have six freshly prepared toasts on a hot dish, place six oysters on each toast, evenly divide a celery sauce over them and serve.
A simple broil that lives or dies on timing. Everything below is in service of getting the oysters off the heat while they are still plump.
- Four minutes a side is too longShucked oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and the crumbs colour, roughly 1 to 2 minutes a side under a hot modern broiler. The original timing assumes a cooler, slower coal or gas grill; carried out literally under an electric element it gives you rubber.
- "Double broiler" is a piece of equipment, not a double boilerIt means a hinged two-sided wire broiling basket that clamps the food so the whole lot can be flipped at once. A wire rack set over a sheet pan works, though you will have to turn the oysters individually with tongs.
- HeatPreheat the broiler and the rack fully, and set the oysters about 4 inches from the element. A cold rack steams the undersides and the crumbs never crisp.
- Wiping mattersThe instruction to wipe the oysters on a cloth is the difference between crumbs that adhere and crumbs that slide off. Drain them well, blot dry, then oil, season and crumb.
- Oyster sizeThe recipe just says "large," with no grading given. Very small oysters will overcook before browning, so buy the biggest shucked oysters you can and drain them well; the liquor can be saved for the sauce if you like.
- The celery sauce is not hereThe wording implies a sauce made separately, presumably given elsewhere in the book. A workable version is a white sauce built on a light roux with milk or chicken stock, finished with celery simmered soft and sieved or blended. Season it before it hits the oysters, which are already salted.
- Toast"Freshly prepared toasts" means toast cut to a size that will hold six oysters, so a substantial slice. Toast at the last minute and keep the platter hot; the sauce will sog anything that has been sitting.
- YieldSix servings as written, six oysters on a toast each. As a first course it stretches to eight or ten if you cut the toasts smaller.
The recipe comes from The International Cook Book (1906), by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York. Its logic is restaurant logic: a garnish sauce prepared separately and cross-referenced, portions counted out per plate, everything assembled on a hot dish at the last second. Broiled oysters on toast were standard American hotel and chophouse fare in the decades either side of 1900, when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail in barrels; the celery sauce is of the same moment, celery having been a fashionable and self-consciously refined vegetable on American tables from the 1880s onward, sold in tall glass celery vases and worked into soups, sauces and stuffings.