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Fowl, White Oyster Sauce For
Strain the liquor from a dozen oysters, and be careful to preserve every drop of it. Put into a stewpan the strained liquor, half a pint of milk, a thickening of butter and flour, a little lemon-rind, a blade of mace pounded, and very little cayenne. Stir in three or four table-spoonfuls of cream, and continue to stir till the sauce is thick; then pour it over the scalded oysters, which should previously have been washed and bearded, and put into a clean saucepan. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, move the sauce round for a minute or two, then serve in a tureen. Time, a quarter of an hour to prepare. Probable cost of oysters, 1s. 9d. to 2s. per dozen. Sufficient for a large tureen.
A white sauce built on oyster liquor, meant to be poured over a boiled or roast fowl. The whole thing hinges on heat control: the oysters are barely cooked, and the sauce must not boil once the cream and lemon are in.
- Do not overcook the oysters"Scalded" here means a brief plunge in their own hot liquor or simmering water until the edges just ruffle, well under a minute. Anything approaching a quarter of an hour, the total time the recipe allows for the whole sauce, turns them to rubber.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frilled gill along the edge of the shucked oyster. Modern shucked oysters are usually sold ready to eat and need no trimming, though the tough muscle can be snipped off if you prefer a uniform texture.
- Save the liquorThe instruction to preserve every drop is the flavour base of the sauce. Strain it through muslin or a fine sieve to catch shell grit. A dozen oysters may give only about a quarter to half a cup; if yours are dry, top up with fish stock rather than more milk.
- Half a pintImperial measure, so 10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups of milk. Three or four tablespoons of cream is around 50 ml.
- A thickening of butter and flourBeurre manie: about 1 oz (30 g) softened butter mashed with 1 oz flour, whisked into the warm liquid in small pieces. With the milk, liquor and cream together coming to something near two cups of liquid this gives a pouring sauce rather than a coating one.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg. A blade is one whole piece; if using ground, a scant 1/8 teaspoon is enough. "Pounded" means crushed in a mortar, so it will disperse through the sauce rather than being lifted out; the lemon rind, a pared strip of zest with no pith, should be removed before serving.
- Add the lemon last, off the boilAcid plus cream plus heat curdles. Squeeze the juice in with the pan at a bare simmer or off the flame entirely, and use half a lemon first, tasting before you commit to the whole one against 1 1/4 cups of milk.
- YieldA dozen oysters and a pint or so of sauce, which the recipe calls sufficient for a large tureen; as an accompaniment to a fowl that will stretch across a table, though the recipe names no number of servings.
- The prices1s. 9d. to 2s. per dozen was the cost of oysters when this book was compiled and has no bearing on anything you will pay now.
Oyster sauce for boiled fowl was one of the fixed pairings of the British table for most of the nineteenth century, sitting alongside the boiled turkey and the cod that also demanded it. Its ubiquity rested on abundance: oyster beds in the Thames estuary, Essex and along the Channel coast supplied the cities in such quantity that, in the earlier part of the century at least, oysters were a working-class food, sold from street barrows and used freely as stuffing, in pies and in gravies and sauces. The white version is distinguished from the brown by using milk and cream rather than the stock or gravy of the bird, and by leaning on the oyster liquor and a blade of mace for savour. By the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary the beds are generally said to have been overfished and prices climbing; the dish appears to have become a luxury before long, and the pairing survives now mainly as an entry in books like this one.