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Oysters on the Half-Shell
Wash off the shells of as many Blue Points as are needed, open them, and loosen the oysters from the under shell, removing the upper shell. Serve on oyster plates, or on shallow soup plates, filled with cracked or shaved ice. Cut lemons in quarters, and serve on each plate with the oysters. Serve with them salt, pepper, Worcestershire, Tabasco, or horseradish sauce.
This is an assembly job rather than a cooked dish, so nearly everything depends on the oysters themselves and on how they are opened.
- SourcingBuy from a dealer who can show the shellfish tag, which by law records the harvest waters and date. Shells should be closed, or should close when tapped; discard any that gape or smell of anything but clean seawater. Raw oysters carry a real Vibrio risk for anyone pregnant, immunocompromised, or with liver disease, who should eat them cooked instead.
- "Blue Points"In 1905 the name still pointed to a Long Island oyster, though it was already used loosely. Today it is a market style — a mild, medium, hard-shell Atlantic oyster — and any similar Crassostrea virginica will serve. Substitute freely by size rather than by name.
- Storage before openingKeep them cup-side down in the refrigerator under a damp cloth, never sealed in a bag and never sitting in fresh water or melting ice, which kills them. Open within a day or two of purchase and no more than half an hour before serving.
- The hinge of the recipe"Loosen the oysters from the under shell" is the step that matters. Cut the adductor muscle cleanly from the bottom shell so the oyster slides free, but leave it lying in its own liquor — that liquor is half the flavour, so keep the shell level from the moment it opens.
- GritScrub the shells under cold running water with a stiff brush before opening rather than rinsing the opened oyster, which washes away the liquor. Pick out any shell chips with the tip of the knife.
- EquipmentAn oyster knife with a short stiff blade and a folded towel or chain-mail glove; a paring knife will snap. Shaved ice packs closer than cubes and holds the shells upright; the original allows either cracked or shaved.
- QuantityThe recipe leaves the count open. Six oysters per person is a first course, twelve a substantial one; the recipe's quartered lemons work out at one lemon for every four servings.
- SaucesSalt, pepper, Worcestershire, Tabasco and horseradish are what this book offers, and they still work. Anything sweet or thick overwhelms the oyster; if you want a modern addition, a mignonette of shallot in red wine vinegar is closer in spirit than cocktail sauce.
Oysters on the half-shell needed no recipe so much as a supply, and around 1900 New York had one of the greatest in the world: the beds of the Great South Bay, Raritan Bay and the Hudson estuary fed a citywide trade of stalls, cellar saloons and hotel dining rooms, and oysters were cheap enough to count as working people's food rather than luxury. The compiler assumes the reader can buy Blue Points by name and needs telling only how to present them. Within a generation pollution and typhoid outbreaks traced to shellfish closed most of those waters, and the oyster shifted from staple to delicacy. The service described here, cracked ice, lemon quarters and a row of pepper sauces, survived the change essentially untouched and is what a raw bar still sets down today.