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Parmesan Cheese and Oysters
Lay the drained oysters in a well-buttered baking-dish, sprinkle over with minced parsley, and season with pepper and salt. Pour half a glassful of champagne over all, and put a thick cover of grated Parmesan cheese. Set in the oven until it is well browned. When it is done, drain off the fat and serve at once in the dish it was baked in.
A short, forgiving gratin that lives or dies on how briefly it stays in the oven. Everything else is seasoning.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the dish is judged by colour. Use 450F, high enough to brown the cheese before the oysters overcook; a moderate oven will leave you with grey, shrunken oysters under pale cheese.
- Timing is the hingeShucked oysters need only until their edges ruffle, which in a single shallow layer at that heat may be as little as five minutes; check early. If the cheese is not coloured by then, finish under the broiler for a minute rather than leaving the dish in longer.
- Drain them properly"Drained" means drained hard. Tip the oysters into a sieve and let them sit several minutes, then blot; their liquor will otherwise pool and turn the cheese crust into a sauce.
- Half a glassfulA wineglassful in period cookery is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so this is on the order of a tablespoon or two. The recipe gives no quantity of oysters. It is a flavouring, not a poaching liquid.
- ChampagneAny dry sparkling wine works, and a crisp still white such as Muscadet or Chablis is a reasonable stand-in. Sweet sparkling wine is not; the sugar will caramelise against the salt cheese.
- Parmesan"a thick cover" is left to the cook; the recipe gives no weight, and no oyster count either. Grate it finely from a block; pre-grated cheese carries anti-caking agents (cellulose or starch) and tends to brown to a powdery rather than a glazed crust.
- Draining off the fatWhat collects is butter plus the wine and any liquor the oysters give up. Tilt the dish and spoon it off, or the last mouthfuls will be greasy.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Whatever you use, keep the oysters in a single layer rather than stacking them; use a wider dish or two dishes.
Baked oysters under a cheese crust are a familiar dish of the later nineteenth century, by which time Parmesan was well established in English and American kitchens as a grating cheese for gratins and macaroni rather than a table cheese. Oysters and champagne were a common supper-room pairing in the period, and cookbooks of the time were willing to put the wine into the dish as well as the glass. Oysters were then cheap and abundant enough on both the Atlantic coast and in Britain to be treated this casually.