Home › Fish › Oysters-Scalloped
Oysters-Scalloped
1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups crumbs teaspoon salt Cayenne 6 tablespoons butter 3 4 cup liquid Wash oysters with cup cold water in colander and remove pieces of shell. Strain the juice. Melt butter, add crumbs and seasoning. shell.
Strain the juice. Melt butter, add crumbs and seasoning. Line the bottom of a greased baking dish with the crumbs then add the oysters. Add more crumbs, and remainder of oysters and liquid, which may be liquid from oysters or milk. Cover with buttered crumbs.
Bake in a moderate oven 30 to 40 minutes. A large shallow pan is always preferable to a deep baking pan, as there should be only 2 layers of oysters. 1 quart oysters 1 quart milk
A standard American scalloped oyster: two layers of shucked oysters between buttered crumbs, baked until the edges of the oysters curl. The ingredient list as printed is muddled, so read the method for the proportions that matter.
- QuantitiesWork from about 1 quart of shucked oysters, 6 tablespoons butter, and 3/4 cup liquid. No crumb quantity is given in the text at all; allow enough for a bottom layer, a middle layer and a buttered top, roughly a couple of cups.
- The liquidUse the strained oyster liquor, made up to 3/4 cup with milk, as the text allows. The trailing "1 quart milk" contradicts the 3/4 cup called for in the method and looks like stray type from an adjoining recipe; ignore it.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. The recipe allows 30 to 40 minutes; in a shallow dish the shorter end will usually do.
- Two layers onlyThis is the hinge. Oysters stacked deeper steam in their own juice and never firm properly, while the outer ones overcook. The text is explicit that a large shallow pan is preferable to a deep one.
- Strain the liquorRinsing the oysters in a colander with a little cold water loosens shell fragments; save and strain the juice through a fine sieve or a cloth to catch the grit.
- CayenneNo quantity is given; a pinch is enough. Salt lightly, since oyster liquor is already saline.
- Buttered crumbsToss the top layer of crumbs with melted butter before adding them, or they scorch in patches rather than browning evenly.
- YieldNo yield is given. A quart of oysters will serve about six as a side dish, or four as a main course with bread.
Scalloped oysters were a fixture of American cooking from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The name is conventionally traced to the shell the dish was once baked in -- individual scallop shells, or the deep half of an oyster shell, filled with oysters and crumbs and set in the oven -- though that account is the traditional one rather than a settled derivation, and the older cookery spelling "escallop" has also been linked to "collop," a slice. Rail and ice shipment carried barrelled oysters well inland during the second half of the century, which helps explain why such a dish turns up in general household books rather than only in coastal ones. Recipes of this kind suited the corporate and utility cookbooks of the early twentieth century, since they use a single baking dish and take cracker crumbs as readily as bread; scalloped oysters are still associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas tables in parts of the eastern United States.