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Fried Oysters
(Holstein style.) Open and drain 2 dozen fine large oysters, dry in a napkin, and keep the juice for soup. Mix some salt and pepper, 1/2 a cup of flour, a little butter, and the yolk of 2 eggs. Dip each oyster in this, covering well, then in a mixture of equal parts bread-crumbs and grated cheese. Fry them in boiling fat, drain and garnish with parsley and lemon.
A straightforward deep-fry, but the coating as written is a paste rather than a batter and needs judgment. Two dozen large oysters serves four as a course, two as a supper.
- The hinge: dry oystersOysters hold a great deal of liquid, and any of it left on the surface will slide the coating off in the fat. Drain them well, then blot between towels until the surfaces look matte.
- "Boiling fat" means 375FFat does not boil; the phrase is period shorthand for fat hot enough to bubble furiously around food. Use a thermometer and hold 370-375F, frying in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- TimingLarge oysters need 1 to 2 minutes, until the crust is deep gold. Anything past that and the oyster contracts into rubber inside its shell of crumbs.
- Thin the first coatingHalf a cup of flour with two yolks and butter makes a stiff paste that will not coat evenly. Loosen it with a spoonful or two of the reserved oyster liquor or milk until it has the body of heavy cream.
- "A little butter"The amount is unspecified; a very small quantity, softened rather than melted hot enough to cook the yolks, is the safe reading. Its job is richness in the coating, nothing more.
- The cheeseGrated cheese in a recipe of this kind most likely indicates a hard grating cheese, such as Parmesan or a dry Gruyere. Use fine dry crumbs in equal measure; fresh crumbs hold too much moisture and the cheese will scorch before the crust sets.
- Frying mediumThe recipe specifies only "boiling fat"; lard or rendered beef fat would have been usual. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works, and you want at least two inches so the oysters float free.
- Keep the liquorStrain the reserved juice through muslin to catch shell grit before using it for soup or to thin the coating. It sours quickly, so refrigerate and use within a day.
"Holstein style" in older continental cookery signals a garnish or treatment associated with northern Germany, most familiarly in Schnitzel a la Holstein, where a veal cutlet arrives under a fried egg with anchovy and capers. Here the borrowing is looser, and what connects it to that tradition may be no more than the egg-yolk-and-flour coating and the grated cheese in the crumbs, more a German and Austrian habit than an English one. The recipe sits at the junction of two traditions: the cheap and abundant nineteenth-century oyster, fried by the dozen on both sides of the Atlantic, and the continental crumb-and-cheese crust. Saving the liquor for soup was common thrift in kitchens that shucked their own oysters, since the strained juice served as a base for oyster soups and sauces.