Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. Marion Harland
dry; loosen the shell carefully, not to break the flesh; cut open also with care, lest you touch the gall-bag with the knife. Remove this with the entrails and sand-bag. Cut up all the rest of the animal into small bits, season with pepper, salt, a chopped onion, sweet herbs, and a teaspoonful of some spiced sauce, or a tablespoonful of catsup—walnut or mushroom. Save the juice that runs from the meat, and put all together into a saucepan with a closely fitting top. Stew gently fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, and add a great spoonful of butter, a tablespoonful of browned flour wet in cold water, a glass of brown Sherry, and lastly, the beaten yolk of an egg, mixed with a little of the hot liquor, that it may not curdle. Boil up once, and turn into a covered dish. Send around green pickles and delicate slices of dry toast with it.
Stewed Oysters.
Drain the liquor from two quarts of firm, plump oysters; mix with it a small teacupful of hot water, add a little salt and pepper, and set over the fire in a saucepan. Let it boil up once, put in the oysters, let them boil for five minutes or less—not more. When they “ruffle,” add two tablespoonfuls of butter. The instant it is melted and well stirred in, put in a large cupful of boiling milk and take the saucepan from the fire. Serve with oyster or cream crackers, as soon as possible. Oysters become tough and tasteless when cooked too much, or left to stand too long after they are withdrawn from the fire.
Fried Oysters. ✠
Use for frying the largest and best oysters you can find. Take them carefully from the liquor; lay them in rows upon a clean cloth, and press another lightly upon them to absorb the moisture. Have ready some crackers crushed fine. In the frying-pan heat enough nice butter to cover the oysters entirely. Dip each oyster into the cracker, rolling it over that it may become completely incrusted. Drop them carefully into the frying-pan, and fry quickly to a light brown. If the butter is hot enough they will soon be ready to take out. Test it by putting in one oyster before you risk the rest. Do not let them lie in the pan an instant after they are done. Serve dry, and let the dish be warm. A chafing-dish is best.
Oyster Fritters. ✠
Drain the liquor from the oysters, and to a cupful of this add the same quantity of milk, three eggs, a little salt, and flour enough for a thin batter. Chop the oysters and stir into the batter. Have ready in the frying-pan a few spoonfuls of lard, or half lard, half butter; heat very hot, and drop the oyster-batter in by the tablespoonful. Try a spoonful first, to satisfy yourself that the lard is hot enough, and that the fritter is of the right size and consistency. Take rapidly from the pan as soon as they are done to a pleasing yellow brown, and send to table very hot.
Some fry the oyster whole, enveloped in batter, one in each fritter. In this case, the batter should be thicker than if the chopped oysters were to be added.
Scalloped Oysters. ✠
Crush and roll several handfuls of Boston or other friable crackers. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Wet this with a mixture of the oyster liquor and milk, slightly warmed. Next, have a layer of oysters. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and lay small bits of butter upon them. Then another layer of moistened crumbs, and so on until the dish is full. Let the top layer be of crumbs, thicker than the rest, and beat an egg into the milk you pour over them. Stick bits of butter thickly over it, cover the dish, set it in the oven, bake half an hour; if the dish be large, remove the cover, and brown by setting it upon the upper grating of oven, or by holding a hot shovel over it.
Broiled Oysters. ✠
Choose large, fat oysters; wipe them very dry; sprinkle salt and cayenne pepper upon them, and broil upon one of the small gridirons sold for that purpose. You can dredge the oyster with cracker-dust or flour if you wish to have it brown, and some fancy the juices are better kept in in this way. Others dislike the crust thus formed. Butter the gridiron well, and let your fire be hot and clear. If the oyster drip, withdraw the gridiron for an instant until the smoke clears away. Broil quickly and dish hot, putting a tiny piece of butter, not larger than a pea, upon each oyster.
Cream Oysters on the Half-shell.
Pour into your inner saucepan a cup of hot water, another of milk, and one of cream, with a little salt. Set into a kettle of hot water until it boils, when stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt, with white pepper. Take from the fire and add two heaping tablespoonfuls of arrow-root, rice-flour, or corn-starch, wet with cold milk. By this time your shells should be washed and buttered, and a fine oyster laid within each. Of course, it is selon les régles to use oyster-shells for this purpose; but you will find clam-shells more roomy and manageable, because more regular in shape. Range these closely in a large baking-pan, propping them with clean pebbles or fragments of shell, if they do not seem inclined to retain their contents. Stir the cream very hard and fill up each shell with a spoon, taking care not to spill any in the pan. Bake five or six minutes in a hot oven after the shells become warm. Serve on the shell. Some substitute oyster-liquor for the water in the mixture, and use all milk instead of cream.
Oyster Omelet. ✠
12 oysters, if large; double the number of small ones.
6 eggs.
1 cup milk.
1 tablespoonful butter.
Chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.
Chop the oysters very fine. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately as for nice cake—the white until it stands in a heap. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan, and heat while you are mixing the omelet. Stir the milk into a deep dish with the yolk, and season. Next put in the chopped oysters, beating vigorously as you add them gradually. When they are thoroughly incorporated, pour in the spoonful of melted butter; finally, whip in the whites lightly and with as few strokes as possible. If the butter is hot, and it ought to be, that the omelet may not stand uncooked, put the mixture into the pan. Do not stir it, but when it begins to stiffen—“to set,” in culinary phrase, slip a broad-bladed, round-pointed dinner-knife around the sides, and cautiously under the omelet, that the butter may reach every part. As soon as the centre is fairly “set,” turn out into a hot dish. Lay the latter bottom upward over the frying-pan, which must be turned upside-down dexterously. This brings the browned side of the omelet uppermost. This omelet is delicious and easily made.
Oyster Pie. ✠
Make a rich puff-paste; roll out twice as thick as for a fruit-pie for the top crust—about the ordinary thickness for the lower.