Scalloped Oysters.
1 quart of fine oysters.
1 coffee-cupful of pounded cracker.
2 great spoonfuls of butter.
½ cupful of cream or rich milk.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Butter a baking-dish and cover the bottom pretty thickly with pounded cracker. Wet with oyster liquor and a few spoonfuls of cream. Next, lay oysters, one deep, closely over these. Pepper and salt, and stick a bit of butter upon each. Another layer of crumbs, wet as before; more oysters, and proceed in like order until your dish is full, making the top layer of crumbs with butter dotted over it. Set in the oven, invert a plate or tin pan over the dish, and bake until the juice bubbles up to the top. Uncover; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown, and send to table in the bake-dish. Pass around sliced lemon with it.
Oysters, like fish, follow immediately after soup, and are a course by themselves.