Secret Origins: The Oyster Loaf

If I asked you, where did the sandwich called Oyster Loaf originate, what would you say?

Would you say that of course the sandwich originated in New Orleans? That it was sometimes known as La Mediatrice, or the Peacemaker, due to the practice of men carrying one home as a peace offering for their wives when they were out carousing too late? That it is an archaic name and form of what eventually became known as a po’boy?

Or would you say instead that it was San Francisco where the Oyster Loaf got its start? That the shellfish, so prevalent then in the waters of San Francisco Bay, were a particularly popular protein in the mid-19th century? That prospectors would buy them up by the score, fried, and stuff them into bread loaves, where they were somewhat protected from the hazards of travel? Perhaps you might point out that they remained named “Oyster Loaf” on menus there at least into the 20th century?

Do you instead swear that they might have instead come from Mobile, Alabama? From Baltimore, maybe, or somewhere on Chesapeake Bay at any rate, where oysters were also once common? From parts farther north or east? Perhaps you’ve been eating them all your life, right in your own hometown, and consider them part of your local culinary landscape.

It’s New Orleans, though, whose supporters cry the loudest, whose claim seems the strongest. So to New Orleans we turn our attention first.

Casamento’s

Of all the oyster bars in all the towns in all the world, Casamento’s in New Orleans seems to be the name most closely associated with the Oyster Loaf sandwich. It is the “one place to go” in New Orleans for this piece of “sandwich perfection,” the “best sandwich” in a city known for great sandwiches. I’m not quite ready for a trip to New Orleans–though my travel shoes are getting fidgety–but luckily Saveur published a recipe for the sandwich just a couple of years ago.

We start with a thick slice of bakery-fresh soft white bread, lightly toasted and buttered

Next we add a dozen fried oysters. The oysters at Casamento’s are dredged in corn flour and fried in lard–I just picked up some good fried oysters from a local fish market.

The Saveur article says that the classic Casamento’s oyster loaf, the purist’s version of the sandwich, is served simply, the oysters dressed with nothing more than the butter on the bread, some cocktail sauce, lemon juice and hot sauce.

However, it takes the liberty of adding mayonnaise, tomato, and lettuce, a liberty I took as well, along with serving the cocktail sauce on the side. It was perfect for dipping the oysters that inevitably escaped from this massive, overloaded pile of shellfish barely contained by bread.

Mayonnaise, tomato, and lettuce are no match though for the palate fatigue brought on by eating most of a pound of oysters enclosed in a thick envelope of warm bread. The cocktail sauce helps, as does a crisp briny pickle spear (or several)

Would I get this sandwich if I were in New Orleans? Yes I would. Obviously my homemade versions are mere shadows of the real sandwiches I’m researching and this sandwich is legendary–there must be a reason. But I’d bring along someone to help me finish it. It may not be an entire loaf of bread as the name of the sandwich implies–but it’s a lot of food.

“The Traveling Sandwich”

San Francisco’s claim on the sandwich seems to rest mostly on a 2012 Mother Jones essay by former editor Dave Gilson, who cites a 1926 article by Charles Caldwell Dobie in The San Franciscan as evidence. The Dobie article states “It was San Francisco that invented oyster cocktails, oyster loaves, and Pisco punches. All three a result of dire necessity… After a night with the boys, they felt the urge to placate the lady of their heart with a tid-bit and the Chinaman at Gobey’s Saloon thought up an oyster loaf.”

Neither Gilson’s article nor its source are explicitly about food–the Mother Jones article is about the history of the building where their site is headquartered–it once housed the saloon referenced in the Dobie piece, which itself is called “Provincialism” and concerns, as Dobie himself put it, the “slings and arrows of outrageous rotarianism.” I don’t know how seriously we ought to take their claims. Brett Anderson of the Times-Picayune newspaper published in New Orleans did take it seriously though, at least long enough to confirm that accounts from New Orleans of the sandwich and its wife-pacifying powers existed as far back as the 1890s–that in other words there was “proof New Orleanians were eating sandwiches called oyster loaves and peacemakers before Gobey’s ever hosted its first scene of gilded vice and squalid sin.”

Yet the San Francisco oyster loaf references do exist, and while there are a number of different recipes, many accounts on the internet seem to reference this paragraph describing the “Traveling Sandwich” and its accompanying recipe on New York-based recipe site Food52.

This recipe starts with a round loaf of sourdough bread–of course, given San Francisco’s storied association with high quality sourdough.

First, a “lid” is cut off the top of the boule and the inner crumb removed, leaving a 1/2″ to 3/4″ thick bread wall around the sides and bottom. The removed crumb can be toasted in a warm oven until dried, then pulsed in a blender into crumbs for breading… the oysters.

Food52’s recipe calls for 1 pound of oysters from a jar, and that is a perfectly valid way to go about things. For whatever reason, perhaps from my experience shucking mussels for the Turkish Midye Tava last month, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a couple dozen fresh oysters, shuck them and fry them.

Don’t do this. Leave the good oysters for the people who are going to appreciate them properly.

In addition to the breaded, fried oysters, the Food52 recipe calls for a mixture of wilted spinach, sauteed leeks, onions, and garlic, beaten eggs, and shredded parmesan cheese. Now this sandwich is edging toward my sweet spot–pastries stuffed with cheese and greens are among my favorite things to eat.

First though we’re going to butter the insides of the bread and its lid and toast them in the oven. Food52 used plain melted butter–I mixed minced garlic and chopped parsley into softened butter and spread it all over instead.

Once all the pieces are in place, the sandwich is assembled by first adding a layer of the spinach mixture into the hollow bread loaf.

Then a layer of breaded oysters, fried in butter

Then one more layer of each

This is capped off by the bread’s “lid” before being returned to the oven to bake for another 15-20 minutes, just long enough to cook the eggs and melt the parmesan.

Though a terribly indulgent cook might additionally baste the outer surface of the bread with some additional melted butter before baking.

The sandwich can be wrapped up in plastic wrap or butcher paper and taken along to a picnic or an outing later in the day–and it’s not a terrible idea to let that bread steam a little, given its multiple stints in a hot oven. At the very least it should be allowed to rest 15 minutes or so, for the eggs to finish cooking and the temperatures to equalize, before cutting it into wedges for serving.

This sandwich is a far different beast than the Casamento’s Oyster Loaf. Where that was a simple bread vehicle for a great pile of fried oysters, the oysters in this sandwich, while present, are part of an ensemble–the crisp, buttery (and in this case garlicky) bread and the gooey, cheesy, oniony spinach filling are at least as important to this sandwich.

2 dozen oysters seems like a lot, but in terms of volume, there is far more of the vegetal matter present than there are fruits of the sea. It is hard in fact to tell where the layers stop and start, so fully has the spinach mixture overtaken the sandwich.

In fact, there was so much of the spinach filling made that I had more than I needed to fill the loaf. What I didn’t use, I mixed with the remaining breadcrumbs made from the interior of this sourdough loaf and some of the egg wash, then rolled that mixture into balls and fried it in the browned butter left over from cooking the oysters

This was a fantastic snack, on par with the sandwich, lacking only a dash of cayenne perhaps to make it perfect. Crisp on the outside, soft and moist within, the texture of a soft meatball with the flavor of a spinach pie.

In fact the spinach mixture was so good that I cannot call its prevalence in this sandwich a weakness. The oysters are there, and so is the bread, and the spinach is maybe just a little more there, and I liked all three of them enough that I didn’t care what ratio each bite contained. We absolutely demolished this oyster loaf over the course of one and a half meals between the three of us.

Modern Confectionary

But what about all those other places across the country where the oyster loaf is known? It may not be a common menu item these days outside New Orleans and San Francisco (and the oyster bars nationwide that pay tribute to them), but the archival material available on the Internet tells a different story.

The oyster loaf used to be everywhere. Recipes for oyster loaves appeared in farm and home almanacs, in church cookbooks, in Good Housekeeping. It was referenced in short stories and newspaper articles. Restaurants serving oyster loaves advertised in newspapers in Brookhaven, MS; in Graham County, Arizona; in Klamath Falls, OR; in St. Louis County, MN. It was widely known enough that this “Inquisitive Edwin” joke from the April 16th, 1912 edition of Chicago’s Day Book newspaper may have once been considered funny.

Well, yes, that’s probably a stretch.

But it’s true that searching the archives, the farther back in time you go, the easier it is to find references to oyster loaves, and abundant recipes for them. Most of these involve cooking the oysters in a pan, often with some kind of cream sauce, sometimes but not always adding a vegetable–diced celery or similar–thickening the sauce with bread crumbs, and stuffing the oysters into a loaf of bread, sauce and all.

That is, until around 1890. Before 1890, the references are still there, but less frequent. There’s this recipe from suffragist Elizabeth Smith Miller’s 1875 book on cooking and household management In the Kitchen.

Some version of this recipe has been reprinted in more newspapers and magazines than I could count. So many of the excerpts I saw began “Cut a round piece, five inches across…” that I tuned them out, so thoroughly in fact that I still have problems registering the number 5. Obviously this particular recipe was hugely influential in American cuisine at the turn of the century, whether it originated in this cookbook or in one of the many books it borrowed from.

Earlier yet was this brief recipe in 1844’s An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy by Thomas Webster and Mrs. William Parkes

The very earliest published recipe I could find for the oyster loaf, however, was this one:

This is from page 183 of Modern Confectionary; containing receipts for drying and candying … By the author of “The Modern Cookery.” Second edition published by Henry Mozley and Sons in 1833. The “Modern Cookery” book the title references is not the well-known Eliza Acton book from 1845 but rather The Modern Cookery, written upon the most approved and economic principles, and in which, every receipt has stood the test of experience. By a Lady also published by Henry Mozley 15 years earlier.

Page 182 of Modern Confectionary contains this recipe for Shrimp Loaf, which is the basis of the Oyster Loaf recipe above:

Cayenne? So is this a New Orleans recipe after all?

No. The publisher Henry Mozley was a British national, publishing out of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England.

So what is this early 19th Century English oyster loaf like? It starts with a two penny loaf of bread. What is a two penny loaf you might ask? I know I did. In the 13th Century, England ratified a law called the Assize of Bread and Ale, which formalized existing practices of weights and measures regarding the sale of bread. Set weights were assigned for loaves priced at specific points–a one penny loaf would weigh so much, a two penny loaf twice that, a halfpenny loaf less, and so on. Searching online, I found this pricing table from 1758.

According to this, a two penny loaf of “Houfhold” bread would weigh one pound, 8 and 11/16 ounces–Household bread was made from a lower grade of flour–and a two penny “Wheaten” or whole grain loaf would weigh 1 pound, 2 and 9/16 ounce. White bread was more expensive, using a more refined type of flour, and the loaves were thus smaller. Regardless, by 1833 the Bread Act of 1822 had abolished these by-the-penny measurements and instead specified that each loaf be weighed in front of the customer and a set price-per-pound paid. Old ways die hard though, and this 1833 recipe still uses the term two penny loaf, indicating it may still have been a common measure.

Let us simply stipulate that by that time, two pennies might buy you about a pound of bread. This King Arthur Flour recipe for “The easiest loaf of bread you’ll ever make” results in approximately 1 kilogram of dough, split into two loaves of just over a pound each.

Mine don’t look as pretty as the ones on the King Arthur site but the recipe is right about one thing: they were pretty easy to make. Unfortunately I accidentally cut into the nicer-looking of the two loaves prematurely, so we’ll have to use the uglier one.

In the nearly 200 years that have passed since Modern Confectionary was published, we have definitely improved the fine art of recipe-writing. There is not much in the way of description or measurement to work with. I get that I need to cut the insides of the bread out, then fill it with oysters, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and cayenne. I understand that bread crumbs will magically make it even better. Butter is involved somehow, a good lump of it. But how to get from the loaf’s pristine state to the desired outcome, how much of everything to use, is left up to me.

So I cut out the insides and pulsed them into crumbs. I melted a stick of unsalted butter in a pan and added the bread crumbs, cooking over medium low heat and stirring constantly until the moisture had cooked out of both the bread and the butter, about 20 minutes. I then added 2 cans worth of oysters along with the liquid, about 1.5 teaspoons of kosher salt and a teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper, 2 blades of mace, ground to a powder, a half teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and for good measure I added just a tiny bit of fresh-grated nutmeg. I cooked this down until the bread crumbs had absorbed the oyster liquid and everything was heated through, just a few minutes, then added the mixture back into the bread loaf.

Then I recapped the loaf

Brushed the top with butter, and baked it for 20 minutes at 350.

Voila! The Oyster Loaf, 1833 edition!

Bread crumbs do improve this sandwich in that having something, anything in it other than oysters and butter is not only good but necessary for the continued function of one’s vital organs. Still, a few pickles wouldn’t be amiss, or some mustard, or really anything to break up the rich fattiness of this filling. It’s good, and the mace/cayenne seasoning is quite nice with the oysters, but I think I may be a bit oystered out at this point.

So that’s it for September, sandwich fans! Next month (that’s starting tomorrow for those of you keeping track) we’ll take on 3 new sandwiches, none of which involve breaded and fried shellfish of any kind. Please let us know in the comments if you have any personal thoughts on the oyster loaf, and thanks for reading!