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Fried Oyster Sandwich
On thin slices of lightly buttered white bread, place a lettuce leaf that has been dipped in mayonnaise dressing. Place fried oysters on lettuce leaf. Put slices together and garnish with a pickle.
The book assumes you already know how to fry an oyster, so the whole technique is left out. Everything that decides whether this works happens in the pan.
- Frying the oystersDrain shucked oysters well and pat dry, then dredge in seasoned flour, egg, and fine cracker crumbs or breadcrumbs. Fry in 375F fat for about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, until the coating is gold and the oyster has just plumped; past that they tighten and turn rubbery.
- QuantityFigure five or six select oysters per sandwich on thin bread. A standard 8 oz container of shucked oysters makes two to three sandwiches.
- Drying matters mostWet oysters steam inside the crust and the breading slides off in one sheet. Drain them in a sieve, then blot, before they touch the flour.
- "Mayonnaise dressing"In 1909 this generally meant a raw-yolk mayonnaise made at home. Commercial mayonnaise, made with pasteurized egg, is the practical substitute and is stable enough to hold on lettuce.
- Dipping the lettuceAn odd-looking step that may do real work: the coated leaf can act as a barrier between the hot fried oysters and the buttered bread, so the crumb does not go soggy. Use a crisp inner romaine or iceberg leaf and shake off the excess dressing.
- BreadThin slices of a close-crumbed white sandwich loaf, crusts trimmed if you want the period look. Toasting is not called for, but a light toast holds up better under fried food.
- Serve at onceThis does not travel or sit. Assemble as the oysters come out of the fat, with the pickle alongside.
Eva Greene Fuller's Up-to-Date Sandwich Book (1909) belongs to a brief American vogue for sandwich manuals, published when cookbook writers were busy cataloguing every filling they could think of. The fried oyster sandwich had a long head start on the book: oysters were cheap, abundant, and sold shucked by the quart in Eastern and Gulf cities through the nineteenth century, and fried-oyster fillings appear in saloon free lunches and street food well before 1900. The best-known relative is the New Orleans oyster loaf, a hollowed loaf packed with fried oysters, traditionally said to have been carried home by husbands as a peace offering and so nicknamed the peacemaker. Fuller's version is the tearoom cousin: same fried oysters, white bread, mayonnaise-dipped lettuce, and a pickle on the plate.