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Virginia Oyster Stew
Strain the liquor from one quart of oysters and put it over to boil; take the yolk of four hard-boiled eggs and very little mustard; mix into a paste with one large tablespoonful of salad oil; then add a cup of the boiling liquor; stir well and keep warm. Add the oysters to the remaining liquor and cook until the edges begin to curl. Pour part of the liquor from the oysters over some nicely prepared toast, leaving the remainder with the oysters. Add to the oysters the egg salad; season with salt and pepper to taste.
An unusual oyster stew: no milk or cream, the body coming instead from hard-boiled egg yolks worked into a mustard-and-oil paste, closer to a warm mayonnaise than a chowder. Two things decide whether it works — the oysters must barely cook, and the yolk paste must never be allowed to boil.
- The hinge: barely cook the oysters"Until the edges begin to curl" is about 1 to 2 minutes in liquor at a bare simmer. Oysters held longer than that shrink and turn rubbery, and no amount of enriching will bring them back.
- Do not boil after the egg mixture goes inThe yolk-and-oil paste is loose and will separate or go grainy if the pot is returned to a boil. Keep the finished stew below a simmer and serve at once.
- Temper the pasteAdding the liquor -- Add the cup of boiling liquor to the paste in a thin stream while stirring, so the cooked yolk paste loosens smoothly instead of staying in lumps.
- A quart of oystersThis means shucked oysters measured with their liquor, roughly 2 lb, or two of the standard 16 oz tubs sold refrigerated. Yield of strained liquor varies, perhaps a cup to a cup and a half; the recipe assumes more than the cup that goes into the paste, so if yours is skimpy, bottled clam juice or a little water makes up the volume.
- Salad oilIn American cookbooks of this era the term meant a mild, neutral oil — often olive oil of the lighter grades, sometimes cottonseed. Use a light olive or a neutral vegetable oil; a strong extra-virgin will dominate the oysters.
- Mustard"Very little mustard" most likely means dry mustard powder, though a prepared mustard cannot be ruled out. A scant quarter teaspoon of the dry suits the caution in the wording.
- Strain the liquor twiceOyster liquor carries shell grit and bits of mantle. Pour it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before heating; the stew has nothing else to hide a gritty texture behind.
- Yield and servingA quart of oysters serves four generously as a first course, or two as a supper. The toast is meant to sit in the bowl and take the plain liquor, with the enriched oysters spooned over.
Oyster stews of this kind belong to the era when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by the barrel and the can; the Chesapeake fishery, though past its 1880s peak, was still very large at the turn of the twentieth century. What sets this version apart is that it has no dairy at all: the thickening comes from hard-boiled yolks beaten with oil and mustard, a liaison that belongs to the older tradition of egg-thickened sauces and cold "salad dressings". The author's own phrase "the egg salad" for the paste points the same way. Serving the stew over toast in the bowl, with some of the plain liquor poured on first to soften it, is common in American cookbooks of the period and survives in oyster houses that still send out stew with crackers or a slab of toast beneath.