Home › Miscellaneous Recipes › Angels on Horseback
Angels on Horseback
6 oysters 6 rounds toasted bread 6 slices fat bacon Salt and pepper to taste The oysters should be good large ones. Cut the fat part of the bacon very thinly, and about one inch in breadth. Wrap this round each oyster, and fasten it with a little wooden skewer. Put the oysters in the oven to crisp the bacon.
Place them on the rounds of toast. Season with salt and pepper to taste, decorate with parsley.
Serve at once.
A Victorian savoury reduced to its essentials. The one thing the recipe leaves out is the heat, and that is where it goes wrong.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Use a hot oven, 425-450F; the aim is to crisp the bacon before the oyster overcooks.
- Timing is the hingeFigure 5-8 minutes at high heat, turning once, and pull them the moment the bacon is crisp and the oyster edges have curled. An oyster held longer than a few minutes past that point turns to rubber, and the whole point of the dish is the contrast between crisp bacon and soft oyster.
- "Fat bacon"The recipe asks for the fat part of the bacon, cut very thinly and about an inch broad; streaky bacon sliced thin answers well. Modern thick-cut bacon will not crisp in the time an oyster can stand; if that is all you have, blanch or part-cook the slices briefly first so they only need finishing.
- SkewersWooden cocktail picks. Soak them in water 10 minutes so they do not scorch, and warn guests they are still in the food when it reaches the table.
- OystersShucked, large, drained well and patted dry -- surface liquor steams the bacon instead of letting it crisp. Their own liquor supplies most of the salt, so season lightly.
- Toast roundsThe recipe specifies only rounds of toast; cut them small enough to sit under a single oyster. Toasting them dry rather than buttered lets them catch the bacon fat. Put the oysters on the toast at the last second or the rounds go soft.
- Yield and servingSix pieces, which is one savoury course for six people at a formal dinner or a canape plate for two or three. Everything can be wrapped and chilled in advance, but the cooking must happen immediately before serving.
Angels on horseback belong to the British savoury -- the small, salty, usually hot dish served after the sweet course and before the dessert of fruit and nuts, a fixture of late Victorian and Edwardian dinners that has almost entirely disappeared from modern menus. The name is generally traced to the French anges a cheval, and it sits opposite devils on horseback, the same treatment given to a prune or a stuffed date; the contrast in names is often said to turn on the sweet-dark filling against the pale oyster, though that gloss is folk etymology rather than established fact.