How to Fake an Oyster.

I have talked about ‘mock’ food in many previous blog posts, but it seems that the topic is inexhaustible. Today’s post was triggered by finding the following recipe, which, I would hazard a guess, would not find much favour in our modern, offal-averse society.

Mock Oysters.
Take brains from the heads of hogs, as whole as possible; remove the skin and throw them into salt and water; let them remain in this two hours; then boil them, until done, in sweet milk; take them up in an earthen bowl or dish, and pour over weak vinegar to cover them; prepare sufficient vinegar to cover them, by adding it to cloves, allspice, and cinnamon to taste; season well with pepper, using part red pepper; scald this vinegar; pour off the weak vinegar, cover with the spiced vinegar. Eat cold, or stewed with crackers as oysters.
Mrs Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book, 1867.

I wondered what else has been used in the past to imitate the oyster. A more obvious, and conveniently vegetarian option would be to use the ‘oyster plant’ or salsify – so called because of its supposed flavour similarity with the shellfish.


Mock Oysters.
Scrape salsify roots and throw each one as you scrape it into cold water. Cover with boiling water and boil gently three-quarters of an hour. They will then be tender. Mash the roots and put through a colander. Then season with salt and pepper to taste and stir in beaten eggs, allowing one egg to two heaping tablespoons of salsify pulp. Have on a griddle or in a saucepan hot fat. Drop the mixture from a spoon and fry. When one side is brown, turn the salsify cake and brown on the other side. Serve hot.
The Home Cook Book – a collection of practical receipts by expert cooks, 1905.

A further degree of separation from the real thing is achieved by using the parsnip, which presumably is itself standing in for the salsify.


Mock Oysters.
Use three grated parsnips, three eggs, one teaspoonful of salt, one teacupful of sweet cream, butter half the size of an egg, three tablespoonfuls of flour. Fry as pancakes.
Vaughan’s Vegetable Cook Book; how to cook and use rarer vegetables and herbs, fourth edition, 1919.

If one is going to imitate something rare, one might as well use something which is common, which in one large part of the world means – corn. Corn fresh from the cob, corn canned, and corn ground into hominy can all be used to mimic the oyster – or at the very least the oysters generally blobby shape.


Mock Oysters.
Grate the corn, while green and tender, with a coarse grater, into a deep dish. To two ears of corn, allow one egg; beat the whites and yolks separately, and add them to the corn, with one tablespoon of wheat flour and one of butter, a teaspoonful of salt and pepper to taste. Drip spoonfuls of this batter into a frying pan with hot butter and lard mixed, and fry a light brown on both sides.
In taste they have a singular resemblance to fried oysters. The corn must be young.
White House Cook Book, by Fanny Lemira Gillet (1889)

But would anyone really be fooled by fried green tomatoes as a stand-in?


Mock Oysters.
Wash green tomatoes, remove stems, and cut in half inch slices or thicker. Dip in barley four to coat thoroughly. Sauté in hot frying pans containing cooking oil or salt pork drippings to the depth of one-fourth inch. They should be well browned on both sides, but not burned. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper while cooking. Arrange on hot platters; serve with Brown Sauce. To make the latter, add sufficient drippings to the pan in which the tomatoes were cooked, stir in flour, cook until brown; add hot stock, and when thickened and well cooked, strain and pour over tomatoes, or serve in separate dishes.
More Recipes for Fifty, by Frances Lowe Smith, 1918

Here is my recipe pick for mock oysters, on account of its more determined attempt to reproduce the fishy flavour and soft texture of the real oyster.


Oysters, Mock.
Wash and scrub well a dozen deep oyster shells. Mince the flesh of a Dutch herring very finely, divide it into twelve parts and put one part into each of the shells. Place upon it a iece of boiled sweetbread, the size and shape of a small oyster, which has been dipped in egg and breadcrumbs. Sprinkle breadcrumbs thickly over the mock oyster, lay a piece of butter on each, and bake them in the oven, or put them before the fire for a few minutes until they are lightly browned. Serve very hot.
Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, London, c1870s

Quotation for the Day.

Oysters are the most tender and delicate of all seafoods. The stay in bed all day and night. They never work or take exercise, are stupendous drinkers, and wait for their meals to come to them.
Hector Bolitho, The Glorious Oyster (1960)

Angels, Devils, and Pigs.

I have been side-tracked recently into a minor exploration of historical bacon recipes. Life’s interesting little side-tracks have a secondary level of deviations and detours all of their own, as I am sure you have found for yourself. One along which I found myself wandering was the trail of the original ‘Angels on Horseback’. I am sure you are all familiar with these delicious items – oysters wrapped in bacon and served as an hors d’oeuvre – or, if you have traditional English eating habits, as the small savoury dish which represents the final course at dinner or supper.


If you are familiar with Angels on Horseback, you are probably also familiar with their cheaper cousin, Devils on Horseback, made with a devilishly black prune (or occasionally a date) where the oyster should be? There are other interpretations of the idea too – we had Oysters Dick Turpin some time ago, but have yet to enjoy Pigs in a Blanket (which are served on toast, therefore technically a canapé not an hors d’oeuvre – for those of you inclined to pedantry in these matters.)

So, when did Angels on Horseback first appear, and whence their name? The second question I cannot answer, there being a surfeit of theories which I have not attempted to authenticate at this time. The first question I cannot answer either with any degree of certainty save to say that the Oxford English Dictionary is not correct. The OED gives the first citation as the 1888 edition of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, but a very superficial search retrieves some earlier mentions. I make no claim that the following one (from 1800) is the absolute earliest, but it provides a much earlier and very different interpretation of ‘Devils on Horseback’.

“All frequenters of London restaurants know, I suppose, the pleasant little dish called “Angels on Horseback”, sometimes transformed into “Devils.” I find them extremely agreeable with brown bread and butter, and any favourite beverage – cocoa, chocolate, wine, or beer – on returning form an evening’s amusement with exhausted energies; and, lest any of my readers should not know how to arrange them, I give the directions:-

Take a dozen or more fine native oysters, according to your party, remove the beard, and wrap each oyster up in a tiny very thin slice of good bacon, having first salted and peppered it to taste, and added a few drops of lemon juice. Procure some well galvanized or silvered thin skewers, and string the rolled up oysters onto these till each skewer is full. Place them in a Dutch oven before the fire, turning them until the bacon is well done, brown, and crisp, serve on a hot dish, leaving the oysters on the skewers, which can be removed as wanted with a fork.

To transform the “angels” into “devils”, add a larger quantity of cayenne pepper or even a few shreds of capsicum. I prefer the “angels” as retaining the flavour of the oysters, just as I think whitebait is best not devilled. These delicate morsels keep hot for a long time before the fire in my plate warmer, which for the occasion becomes an oven, for the preservation of viands and hot plates, after the prescribed hours of bedtime for the household.

[Aberdeen Weekly Journal, Dec 11, 1800 in ‘Our Ladies Column’]

And as for ‘Pigs in Blankets’, here is a recipe from the Household Column of the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle of January 8, 1887.

“Little Pigs in Blankets” are made by first draining the oysters and seasoning with salt and pepper, and then cutting fat bacon into very thin slices and wrapping a big oyster in each slice, fastening with a wooden skewer – a toothpick is best. The frying pan must be heated well before the little pigs are put in, and they must be cooked long enough for the bacon to crisp. These are to be served immediately on toast cut into small pieces.

Quotation for the Day.

“I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing.”
James Beard (1903-1985)

The Loves of Casanova.

Today, April 2nd …

Giacomo Casanova was born on this day in 1725 in Venice. Casanova apparently had many other interests, charms and habits (good and bad), but popular history has chosen to feature only his notorious womanising (the official number of seductions in his memoir was of a mere 122 women.) His last years, expelled from his own country and shunned by the man believed to be his biological father, he lived a dull and relatively friendless life as a librarian to an aristocrat in Bohemia.

Casanova loved food, it is said, almost as much as he loved women. At the age of 73 this was his remaining pleasure: he was described at that age as ‘no longer a god in the garden or a satyr in the forest, he is a wolf at table.’ In his more virile days, he supposedly used to his benefit the aphrodisiac effect of oysters, describing his particular method of serving thus:

‘I placed the shell on the edge of her lips and after a good deal of laughing, she sucked in the oyster, which she held between her lips. I instantly recovered it by placing my lips on hers.’

Oysters have been considered aphrodisiacs since at least Roman times, and there may be something in the myth after all. Some American and Italian researchers recently published their findings in this regard. They found that oysters are very rich in amino acids, particularly those that stimulate the release of certain hormones. I bet those researchers have no problem finding volunteers for their follow-up research.

The aphrodisiac effect is said to only occur when the oysters are eaten raw. Should you dislike or fear raw seafood, or fear or not need this hormone boost, you can cook them of course. Here are some recipes from the time of Casanova, to give you some ideas.

From: The Country Housewife and Ladies Director; Richard Bradley (1732)

To stew Oysters. From Exeter.
Take large Oysters, open them, and save their Liquor; then when the Liquor is settled, pour off the Clear, and put it in a Stew-Pan, with some Blades of Mace, a little grated Nutmeg, and some whole Pepper, to boil gently, till it is strong enough of the Spices: then take out the Spices, and put in the Oysters to stew gently, that they be not hard; and when they are near enough, add a piece of Butter, and as much grated Bread as will thicken the Liquor of the Oysters; and just before you take them from the Fire, stir in a Glass of White-wine.

Roasted Oysters in Scallop Shells. From Exeter.
Provide some large scallop Shells, such as are the deepest and hollowest you can get, which Shells are sold at the Fishmongers at London; then open such a Number of Oysters as will near fill the Shells you design, and save the Liquor to settle; then pour a moderate quantity of the Liquor into each Shell, and put a Blade of Mace, and some whole Pepper with it; after which, put into your Shells a small piece of Butter, and cover the whole with grated Bread: then let these on a Grid-Iron over the Fire, and when they are enough, give the grated Bread at the tops of the Shells a browning with a red-hot Iron, and serve them.

The same Person who sent the foregoing Receipts, concerning Oysters, advises another way of roasting Oysters, which I think is a very good one, and not much known. It is, to take large Oysters, open them, and hang them by the finny part on a small Spit, after having first dipt them in the Yolk of an Egg, and roll'd them in Crumbs of Bread; turn them three or four times before the Fire, and baste them gently with Butter, till the Crumbs of Bread are crisp upon them, and serve them hot. As for their use in Sauces, they are proper with Fish, and are sometimes used with Fowls; their own Liquor is always put in such Sauces where they are used. For pickling of Oysters, the following is an excellent Receipt.

To pickle Oysters.
Open a quantity of large Oysters, saving their Liquor, and letting it settle; then pour the Liquor clear off into a Stew-pan, and wash the Oysters in Water and Salt: after which, boil them gently in their own Liquor, so that they are not too hard. When they are enough, take them out, and add to the Liquor some Mace, a few Cloves, some whole Pepper, a little Ginger, and a Bay-Leaf or two, and let the Liquor boil, putting to it about a fourth part of White-wine Vinegar, letting it continue to boil a little more; then take it off, and let it stand to be quite cold. When the Oysters are cold, put them into Jars or Gally-pots, and pour the Liquor with the Spice cold upon them; then tie them down with Leather.

Tomorrow’s Story …

An Endive by any other Name.

Quotation for the Day …

She knows no difference 'twixt head and privities who devours immense oysters at midnight. Juvenal, from his Satires, early 2nd C.