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OYSTERS, SAUCE OF, WHITE (another way)
Open and beard a dozen oysters, as in the last recipe. Put the beards into a stewpan with the liquor, a quarter of a pint of white stock, half a dozen peppercorns, an inch of thin lemon-rind, and a bay-leaf, and let them simmer very gently for a quarter of an hour. Mix an ounce of butter smoothly with an ounce of flour, add the strained liquor, a pinch of salt and cayenne, a glassful of sherry or Madeira, a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, and the oysters. When these ingredients are hot through, draw the saucepan to the side, and stir in very gradually the well-beaten yolks of three eggs. Mix thoroughly, and serve immediately. If the sauce is allowed to boil after the oysters are added, they will be hard and leathery. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A classic egg-thickened white oyster sauce, built on a quick infusion of the beards and liquor. Everything hinges on temperature control at the end.
- The hinge: never let it boilOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must stay below a simmer — roughly 175-180F. Above that the yolks curdle and the oysters turn to rubber, exactly as the original warns. Off the heat, added in a thin stream while stirring, is the safest method.
- Oysters need two minutes, not fifteenThe quarter-hour simmer applies only to the beards and liquor, which are strained out and discarded. The shucked oysters themselves go in at the end and are done the moment their edges ruffle.
- BeardsThe dark frill of gills. They are full of flavour but unpleasant to eat; pulled off with the fingers or snipped with scissors, then used to make the infusion.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pint of stock is 5 fl oz (about 2/3 cup) in imperial measure. A "glassful" of sherry or Madeira means a wine glass of the period, roughly 2 fl oz. A dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons.
- White stockA pale, unroasted veal or chicken stock, unsalted and unreduced. A light chicken stock works; avoid anything dark, heavily seasoned or gelatine-thickened, which will muddy the colour the recipe is named for.
- Strain the liquor twiceOyster liquor carries grit and shell fragments. Settle it, then pass it through muslin before it goes into the pan — there is no later chance to remove sand from a finished cream sauce.
- The butter and flourAn ounce of each rubbed together cold is a beurre manié, whisked into the hot strained liquor rather than cooked first. It gives a lighter, less floury body than a cooked roux, but needs a minute or two of gentle heat to lose its raw taste before the yolks go in.
- Yield and servingEnough for five or six as a sauce, not a dish. The recipe does not say what it accompanies; sauces of this kind were generally served with boiled or poached fish or boiled fowl. It will not reheat — serve it the moment it is made.
Cassell's gives several oyster sauces in succession — this one refers back to 'the last recipe' — and this white version, thickened with egg yolks and lifted with sherry or Madeira, sits alongside the plainer English butter-and-milk oyster sauce served with cod. The stated cost of 2s. 6d. covers a dozen oysters, fortified wine and three eggs together, and the fact that the beards are simmered for flavour rather than thrown away shows a kitchen accustomed to using the whole shellfish. Native oyster stocks around the English coast declined heavily through overfishing in the nineteenth century and never recovered, which is part of why a dish of this kind now reads as extravagance.