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Oysters Stewed
Let the liquor first come to a boil, skim it, and add about the same quantity of milk. Let these boil together a very short time, then put in the oysters and cook a few minutes only; add pepper, butter, salt; put a little finely rolled crackers in the dish, and pour the soup over it.
A stew in the older American sense: oyster liquor and milk, thickened only by cracker crumbs. The whole thing takes about ten minutes, and the only real risk is overcooking.
- The hingeOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and they plump, roughly 1-2 minutes in barely simmering liquid. "A few minutes only" is generous; anything past three and they tighten into rubber.
- The liquorThis is the juice in the container of shucked oysters, or what runs off when you open them yourself. A pint of shucked oysters yields roughly half a cup to a cup. Strain it through a fine sieve or cloth to catch shell grit before boiling, and skim as directed.
- Milk proportionsEqual parts liquor and milk gives a thin, briny stew. Many cooks now use half milk and half cream, or all half-and-half, for body. Do not let the milk reach a hard boil once the oysters go in; it will curdle against the salt in the liquor.
- Crackers"Finely rolled crackers" most likely means soda or water crackers crushed to crumbs, put in the serving bowl so the hot stew softens them, as the recipe directs. Oyster crackers or common saltines work; if using saltines, cut back the added salt.
- ButterA generous piece, roughly 1-2 tablespoons for a pint of oysters, added with the pepper and salt once the oysters have cooked.
- YieldA pint of shucked oysters with an equal volume of milk serves two as a main dish or four as a first course. Serve immediately; it does not hold or reheat.
- BuyingUse oysters that smell sweet and are packed in clear, not cloudy, liquor. Refrigerated shucked oysters are fine here since they are cooked through, but they are perishable and should be used within a day or two of purchase.
The milk-and-liquor oyster stew was one of the most ordinary dishes in nineteenth-century American eating, sold in oyster cellars and saloons in every port and river town and made at home wherever the railroads could carry barrels of shucked oysters inland. Chesapeake and Long Island beds supplied a national trade so large that oysters were cheap food rather than luxury food, which is why a book like this treats them with no ceremony at all and gives no quantities. The cracker in the bottom of the bowl is the older habit, predating the standard commercially baked "oyster cracker." The dish survives most visibly as the traditional Christmas Eve supper in many American families, a custom often traced to Irish Catholic immigrants adapting a meatless fast day to the abundant local shellfish.