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Plain Oyster Soup
Pour a quart oysters in colander, rinse by pouring over them pint cold water, put this in porcelain kettle, add a pint boiling water, let boil, skim thoroughly, season with pepper and piece of butter size of large egg; then add oysters, having removed all shells let boil up once, season with salt and serve. - Mrs. Lizzie C. Robinson.
A two-minute soup that depends entirely on not overcooking the oysters. Everything else is water, butter and pepper.
- A quart of oystersThat means shucked oysters sold by volume, roughly 2 pints or 40-50 medium oysters, not shell-on. Two 16-oz containers of fresh shucked oysters is the modern equivalent; drain them but keep the liquor, which is the best flavor in the dish.
- The rinsing waterThe pint of cold water poured over the oysters is collected and used as the broth — it carries the liquor off them. Do not discard it. Pour it through a fine sieve or cheesecloth to catch grit and shell fragments.
- Porcelain kettleAn enamel-lined or otherwise non-reactive pot. Bare cast iron or unlined copper will dull the color and give the broth a metallic edge.
- Butter size of large eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. Generous for a quart of liquid, and intentional: the fat is what makes a water-based soup taste like a soup.
- Let boil up onceThis is the hinge. The oysters go in only after the broth is boiling and skimmed, and they need 1-2 minutes at most — pull them the moment the edges ruffle. Anything approaching a quarter hour leaves them tough and shrunken.
- Salt lastOyster liquor is already saline, and the amount varies by oyster and by season. Season at the end, off heat, and taste before adding anything.
- SkimmingThe scum that rises when the water and liquor first boil is coagulated protein and any remaining grit. Taking it off properly is the difference between a clear broth and a cloudy one.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a quart of oysters in a quart of liquid makes roughly two quarts of soup, enough for four or more. Serve immediately in warmed bowls; the soup does not hold or reheat well.
"Plain" is doing real work in the title. Nineteenth-century American oyster cookery ran heavily to oyster stew thickened with milk or cream and served with crackers, and Buckeye Cookery gives those versions too; this is the unenriched version, oysters in their own lightly buttered liquor. Oysters were cheap and ubiquitous in the 1870s and 80s, shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans to towns like Marysville, Ohio, where this book was compiled — which is why a landlocked Midwestern community cookbook can afford to treat a quart of them as an everyday supper rather than a luxury. The named contributors, Mrs. Lizzie C. Robinson among them, were the local women who supplied the receipts collected in the volume; the attributions are the book's signature and a reminder that these were working household formulas, not restaurant cooking.