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OYSTERS, PIE OF (for Picnics, Luncheons, or Suppers)
Butter the inside of a shallow pie-dish rather thickly, and line the edges with a good puff-paste. Open and beard two dozen fresh oysters, lay them in the dish, season with a little salt and cayenne and half a tea-spoonful of powdered mace, and sprinkle over them three table-spoonfuls of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Mix the strained oyster liquor with the same quantity of thick cream and a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice. Pour this sauce over the oysters, put the cover on the pie, and bake in a moderate oven. A quarter of a pound of the kidney fat of a loin of veal, or a small boiled sweetbread cut into thin slices, is sometimes put into the pie with the oysters. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 4s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian lid-only pie: no bottom crust, just buttered dish, oysters, and a puff-paste roof. Everything hinges on not letting the oysters cook for the full half hour.
- The oysters are the problemHalf an hour at any oven temperature turns oysters into erasers. The usual modern fix is to bake the puff-paste lid separately on a sheet until risen and browned, warm the oysters in the cream and liquor for two or three minutes until their edges just curl, then combine and serve. If you bake it as written, expect firm, chewy oysters in a good sauce.
- "A moderate oven"Conventionally rendered at around 350F/180C, though the book gives no temperatures and the term was relative to the coal range. Puff paste, though, wants a hotter start to lift: 425F/220C for the first 12-15 minutes suits the pastry far better than a moderate oven does.
- BeardingTrimming off the dark frilly gill and the tough muscle edge from a shucked oyster. Shop-shucked oysters in a tub rarely need it; you are mainly removing shell grit and any stringy fringe.
- Two dozen oystersRoughly a pint of shucked meats, and the recipe expects the liquor from opening them. If you buy a tub, reserve every drop of the liquid, since it is half the sauce.
- "The same quantity"Most naturally read as cream equal in volume to the strained oyster liquor, since that is the quantity just named; it can also be read as three tablespoons of cream to match the three tablespoons of breadcrumbs. Equal volumes of liquor and cream give more sauce; three tablespoons of each gives a thinner, well-flavoured one. Neither is wrong.
- MaceThe lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold ground or as blades. Half a teaspoon of ground mace to two dozen oysters is assertive by current taste; a quarter teaspoon is nearer modern expectations, and grated nutmeg is the nearest substitute.
- Veal kidney fat and sweetbreadsThe kidney suet from a loin of veal is not a supermarket item; ordinary beef suet is coarser and will read differently. Veal sweetbreads are still sold by good butchers but need soaking, blanching, pressing and peeling before they can be sliced into a pie.
- Cost and yield4s 6d was a substantial sum for a supper dish, which tells you oysters were no longer the cheap food they had been. The pie serves four or five as written.
Oyster pies and oyster patties run right through English cookery from the seventeenth century onward, when oysters were cheap and plentiful enough to be used as a bulking ingredient in beef pies and stuffings as well as a dish in their own right. Cassell's places this one under picnics, luncheons and suppers, the informal meals where a pie could be cut and served cold or reheated; the puff-paste lid over a buttered dish is a simple construction rather than a raised pie. The recorded cost of 4s 6d is the interesting detail. English oyster beds, particularly in Essex and Kent, were heavily depleted through the later nineteenth century, and prices rose well above the cheap street food of earlier decades; by the time this dictionary was compiled an oyster pie was a dish for a good table rather than a thrifty one. The optional veal kidney fat or sweetbread adds richness and body to a filling that is otherwise mostly liquor and cream.