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Deviled Oyster Sandwich
Cut slices of bread thin, remove crust, and toast.
Cover a slice with oysters, dust thickly with red pepper and spread lightly with mayonnaise. Cover with another slice of toast. Garnish with a slice of lemon.
Four lines of text that assume a great deal of knowledge on the cook's part, chiefly about the oysters themselves. Everything hinges on how you handle them before they touch the toast.
- Raw or cooked is left unsaidThe recipe never tells you to cook the oysters, and the filling appears in period sandwich books both raw and lightly poached. Parboiling them in their own liquor for a minute or two, just until the edges curl, drives off water that would otherwise soak the toast.
- A note on raw oystersIf you do use them raw, buy from a source that tags for harvest date and location. Raw shellfish carries a Vibrio risk that is small but real, and is not advised for anyone pregnant, immunocompromised, or with liver disease.
- "Red pepper" means cayenneIn American cookbooks of this period red pepper is ground cayenne, not paprika and not sweet pepper. "Dust thickly" is what makes the sandwich deviled; a scant quarter teaspoon per sandwich is already assertive.
- Drain them hardOysters shed liquor for as long as they sit. Drain in a sieve, then blot on paper towels before assembling, or the toast collapses within a minute.
- Toast timingThin toast goes leathery as it cools. Toast, cool just long enough that steam stops, then assemble and serve at once rather than making a tray in advance.
- MayonnaiseMayonnaise of this period was generally made at home with raw yolk. Most commercial mayonnaise today is made with pasteurised egg and is the sensible substitute here; the recipe wants only a thin film in any case.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Figure four to five medium oysters per sandwich, so a pint of shucked oysters makes roughly four.
Eva Greene Fuller's The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book belongs to the brief moment when the sandwich went from a picnic convenience to a course in its own right, served at luncheons, teas and card parties, and the book duly runs to hundreds of variations sorted by filling. Oysters appear repeatedly because they were still cheap and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans; a fish section in an American cookbook of this date leans on them far more heavily than a modern one would. "Deviled" is the older English kitchen term for anything made fiercely hot with cayenne, mustard or pepper, recorded in English kitchen use from the late eighteenth century and applied to kidneys, bones, ham and biscuits long before it reached a sandwich.