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Virginia Oyster Soup
Take 1 quart of good oysters and wash through two waters. Strain the liquor and add to it 2 blades of mace, a stalk of celery chopped fine, 1/2 teaspoonful of white pepper, a few grains of cayenne, and salt if necessary. Simmer over the fire five minutes, then add 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed smooth with 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and a pint and a half of rich cream and new milk, half and half. Let it come to a good boil, stirring all the time; then put in the oysters, and let them boil up once and no more, or they will shrivel and toughen. Pour into a hot tureen and give thanks.
A straightforward cream oyster soup whose success rests entirely on the last thirty seconds. Everything else can be done ahead.
- The hingeThe oysters go in at the very end and are heated only until their edges ruffle — under two minutes. The original's "boil up once and no more" is exactly right; longer and they contract into rubber.
- Washing the oysters"Wash through two waters" means lifting the shucked oysters out of two changes of cold water to remove grit and shell fragments. Do not let them soak, and save all liquor by straining it through a fine sieve or cloth.
- QuantitiesA quart of shucked oysters is roughly 2 lb, plus their liquor; the number of oysters varies a good deal with their size. A pint and a half of cream-and-milk is 3 cups. The soup serves about six as a first course, four as a main.
- MaceTwo blades of mace are two pieces of the dried lacy covering of the nutmeg. If you only have ground mace, use a scant 1/4 teaspoon and accept a slightly cloudier soup. Fish the blades out before serving.
- "New milk"Unhomogenised fresh whole milk. Whole milk is the substitute; heavy cream and whole milk in equal parts gives about the richness intended.
- The butter and flourButter rubbed smooth with flour is beurre manié — worked cold into a paste, then whisked into the hot liquid in small pieces. It thickens lightly rather than making a floury béchamel, which is the point here.
- CurdlingOyster liquor is salty, and salt plus a hard boil can make the dairy separate if the pan is too hot. Bring it to a boil once as directed, stirring constantly, then add the oysters and let them boil up once, as the recipe says.
- Salt"Salt if necessary" is doing real work — the liquor is already saline. Season at the end, after the cream has gone in and diluted it.
Oyster soups and stews run through nineteenth-century American cookery in enormous numbers, because oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel from the Chesapeake in particular. Chesapeake oysters, from Virginia and Maryland waters, were among the largest commercial fisheries of the period. The style, with its mace, celery and cream thickened by kneaded butter, belongs to an older Anglo-American manner rather than to the roux-based cream soups taught in the cooking schools around the turn of the century.