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OYSTERS, FORCEMEAT OF (another way)
Open and beard two dozen fresh oysters, and carefully preserve the liquid. Mince them finely, pound them to a smooth paste, and mix with them five ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, an ounce of fresh butter, the rind of half a lemon chopped small, a table-spoonful of minced parsley, a pinch of cayenne, a small tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. When well mixed, bind the mixture together with the unbeaten yolk of an egg and a small quantity of the oyster liquid, added very gradually. Time, half an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 3s. 3d. Sufficient to stuff a good-sized turkey. OYSTERS, FORCEMEAT OF (another way). (See FORCEMEAT OF OYSTER.)
A wet, rich shellfish stuffing scaled to a whole turkey. The only real difficulty is texture: oysters pounded too far turn gluey, and the mixture is meant to hold together while still tasting of oyster.
- BeardingThe "beard" is the dark frilled gill along the edge of the oyster; snip or pull it off, as it stays tough and gritty. Strain the liquor through muslin to catch shell fragments before using it to bind.
- Buying the oystersTwo dozen shucked oysters is roughly a pint, about 12 oz of meat. Jarred shucked oysters sold in their liquor work well here and save the shucking; drain and reserve that liquor in place of the shell liquid.
- PoundingA mortar was the original tool, and the recipe does ask for a smooth paste. A food processor gets there in seconds; if you want more texture than the original specifies, pulse to a coarse paste with visible flecks rather than a purée.
- BreadcrumbsFive ounces of grated crumbs means dry crumbs from stale bread, about 1 1/2 cups. If you use soft fresh crumbs, weigh them rather than measuring by volume; you will need close to 3 cups to reach 5 oz, and the mixture will be looser.
- The liquor, added graduallyThis is the hinge. Oyster liquor is salty and thin, and a few tablespoons is usually enough to make the mass cohere. Stop as soon as it holds a shape under the spoon; over-wetted forcemeat collapses into a pudding in the bird.
- SaltThe 'small tea-spoonful' of salt, plus salty oyster liquor, is seasoning the whole mass -- oysters, five ounces of crumbs, butter and yolk -- not the oysters alone. Season lightly, then taste a small spoonful fried in butter before committing the rest.
- Cook it separatelyModern practice is not to pack raw shellfish forcemeat into the cavity of a bird, where the centre may lag well behind the meat. Bake it in a buttered dish at 350F until the centre reaches 165F, about 30-40 minutes, and roast the turkey unstuffed.
- Yield and costThe ingredients come to roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of forcemeat, which the book reckons sufficient to stuff a good-sized turkey. The 'probable cost, 3s. 3d.' is in Victorian shillings and pence.
Oyster stuffing belongs to the long stretch when oysters were an everyday food rather than a luxury: the great American beds were still yielding heavily through the nineteenth century, while the British native beds were already in decline by the later part of it, and cookery books of the period use oysters to pad out sauces, patties, soups and forcemeats much as one might now use mushrooms. "Forcemeat" is generally traced to the French farce, a stuffing, and by Cassell's day the word covered any pounded, seasoned, bound mixture used to fill a bird, a fish or a pastry case, whether or not it contained meat. The pairing of oysters with roast turkey is often traced to this cheapness on both sides of the Atlantic, where oyster dressing became fixed as a holiday dish; the long decline of the native oyster fisheries — attributed variously to overfishing, pollution, disease and hard winters, and running into the mid-twentieth century — is often said to be what turned the recipe from thrift into extravagance. The cross-reference at the end is typical of the dictionary's structure, which sent readers between duplicate entries rather than printing a method twice.