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. Line a pudding-dish with the thinner, and fill with crusts of dry bread or light crackers. Some use a folded towel to fill the interior of the pie, but the above expedient is preferable. Butter the edges of the dish, that you may be able to lift the upper crust without breaking. Cover the mock-pie with the thick crust, ornamented heavily at the edge, that it may lie the more quietly, and bake. Cook the oysters as for a stew, only beating into them at the last two eggs, and thickening with a spoonful of fine cracker-crumbs or rice-flour. They should stew but five minutes, and time them so that the paste will be baked just in season to receive them. Lift the top crust, pour in the smoking hot oysters, and send up hot.
I know that many consider it unnecessary to prepare the oysters and crust separately; but my experience and observation go to prove that, if this precaution be omitted, the oysters are apt to be wofully overdone. The reader can try both methods and take her choice.