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Oyster Stew (Put the liquor in a stewpan)
Put the liquor in a stewpan, when it comes to a boil, skim well; then pour in two quarts of fresh milk; when it boils add three scant pints of oysters, after looking over carefully and removing all the shell. When the oysters begin to curl remove from the fire, and add salt to suit taste. Use butter generously, and serve hot.
A plain milk stew that depends entirely on when you take it off the heat. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: pull it at the curlOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle, which takes roughly a minute or two in hot milk. Held longer, or allowed to boil again, they tighten and turn rubbery and the liquor goes cloudy.
- The liquorNo quantity is given because it is whatever drains from the oysters. Strain it through a fine sieve or a doubled square of cheesecloth to catch grit and shell fragments; the oysters themselves still need looking over by hand, as the recipe directs.
- Three scant pints of oystersShucked oysters are still sold by the pint, roughly a pound including its liquor. Three pints is a generous ratio to two quarts of milk.
- Milk and curdlingThe recipe boils the liquor first and pours the milk in after; if you want insurance against breaking, bring the milk only to a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil. Whole milk holds together better than skim; salty liquor and hard boiling will break thin milk.
- "Use butter generously"Two to four tablespoons stirred in off the heat is in keeping, and it blends in better after the pan leaves the burner.
- Season at the endOyster liquor varies a great deal in saltiness, so the instruction to salt last is deliberate. White pepper and a few grains of cayenne appear in some period oyster stews.
- YieldNearer four quarts once the milk, oysters and liquor are counted, serving ten or so as a first course. It does not reheat; leftover stew cooks the oysters a second time.
- ServingOyster crackers or a split water biscuit in the bowl is the traditional accompaniment, added at the table so it does not dissolve.
Oyster stew of this kind belongs to the era when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury. Nineteenth-century American cities were supplied by enormous beds in Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound and the Gulf, and shucked oysters travelled inland by rail in sealed cans packed in ice, which is why a household cookbook of the period can assume the reader has three pints on hand and gives no thought to shells. The recipe's whole method is a milk-and-butter frame built to interfere as little as possible with the oysters themselves, and it is the direct ancestor of the version still served at oyster bars and, by long custom, on Christmas Eve tables among Irish-American families in parts of the United States. The saloon and hotel "oyster stew" of the period was often made to order in a single-portion pan.