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Oysters, Meuniere
Wipe dry thirty-six good-sized freshly opened oysters and place in a bowl. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, adding half gill cold milk; mix well, then roll the oysters in flour. Heat two tablespoons oil in a black frying pan, lay the oysters on the pan, one beside another, and briskly fry for three minutes on each side; dress on a hot dish. Thoroughly dry the pan, replace on the fire with one ounce butterand toss the butteruntil a nice brown colour; squeeze in the juice half lemon, add one teaspoon chopped parsley, toss a little and pour over the oysters; decorate the dish with six pieces lemon and serve.
A straightforward pan-fry finished with brown butter, but two of the original numbers need adjusting before it works on a modern range.
- Half a gill of milkA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup). It is only there to wet the oysters so flour clings; drain them briefly before flouring or the coating turns to paste.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is a half teaspoon — assertive but correct for thirty-six oysters.
- Three minutes a side is too longShucked oysters are cooked through in roughly a minute per side in hot fat; at three minutes they shrink, weep and go rubbery. Fry until the flour is golden and pull them, working in batches so the pan stays hot.
- The black frying panCast iron or heavy carbon steel, and the point is heat retention — thirty-six wet oysters will drop the temperature of a thin pan and steam rather than fry.
- Two tablespoons of oil is thinFor a full pan of oysters laid side by side you will want enough fat to keep contact across the base; add more as batches absorb it, and drain the pan completely before the butter goes in.
- Wiping the panThis is the hinge of the finish. Any leftover flour and oil in the pan will scorch and turn the beurre noisette bitter and gritty; use a clean pan if wiping is not enough.
- Brown butterOne ounce is two tablespoons. Take it to the point where the milk solids smell nutty and the foam subsides, then add the lemon juice off the heat so it does not spit and stall the browning.
- YieldThirty-six oysters serves six as a first course, or three or four as a light main with bread.
"Meunière" means "miller's wife" — a name generally traced to the light dusting of flour that defines the method, and one attached in classical French cookery above all to sole. Applying it to oysters is characteristically American: shucked oysters were cheap and abundant in the eastern and Gulf cities around 1900, and hotel and restaurant kitchens ran them through the whole French repertoire — fried, à la poulette, en brochette, meunière. A book called The International Cook Book is doing exactly what its title promises here: taking a French treatment of flatfish and handing it a shellfish instead. The brown-butter-and-lemon finish, poured over at the last moment, is the part that travels unchanged.