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Oyster Club Sandwiches
Thoroughly wipe on a cloth twenty-four freshly opened, large fresh oysters, season with a half teaspoon salt two saltspoons pepper and lightly roll. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in a frying pan, arrange the oysters in one beside another and briskly fry for two minutes on each side. Remove, drain on a cloth, and proceed to make sandwiches in same manner as chicken club.
A short recipe that leans on a neighbouring one for its assembly, and on the cook's judgment for its coating. A few things are worth pinning down before you start.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper — matched to the half teaspoon of salt. That is assertive but correct for two dozen oysters.
- "Lightly roll"The original does not say roll in what. It most likely means a light dredge in flour; cracker crumbs and cornmeal were also used for fried oysters in this period. Flour gives the thinnest crust and is the safest reading.
- Dry the oysters properlyThis is the hinge. Wet oysters steam rather than fry, shed their coating and flood the toast. Blot them on paper towels until the surface looks matte, flour them at the last moment, and put them straight into the pan.
- Butter quantityOne tablespoon will not carry twenty-four large oysters. Work in two or three batches with fresh butter each time, or the pan will dry out and the flour will scorch.
- Two minutes a sideAccurate for large oysters in a properly hot pan — the edges should curl and the coating turn pale gold. Beyond about five minutes total they tighten and go rubbery, so keep the batches small enough to turn them all at once.
- Oysters to buyShucked oysters sold in tubs work perfectly well; drain them and choose the largest. Twenty-four large oysters is roughly a pint of shucked meats.
- "Same manner as chicken club"Club sandwiches of this period were built on buttered toast with mayonnaise, crisp bacon, lettuce and sometimes tomato; some were two slices, some the three-slice double-decker, and they were cut on the diagonal. Substitute the fried oysters for the chicken. Without the book's chicken club recipe to hand, the exact assembly is uncertain.
- YieldSix oysters to a sandwich would give four generous clubs, though the recipe itself states no yield.
The club sandwich was well established in American hotel and dining-car cookery by the time this book appeared, generally dated to around 1906, and Alexander Filippini — long of Delmonico's — treats it as a template rather than a novelty, listing variations that swap the chicken for other proteins. The oyster version reflects how cheap and everyday oysters still were in turn-of-the-century America: Atlantic beds supplied city markets in enormous volume, and fried oysters turned up in sandwiches, stews and pan roasts at every price point. Within a few decades overharvesting, pollution and disease had collapsed much of that supply, which is why an oyster club now reads as a luxury.