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CHAPTER X: Oyster
CREAM - OF - OYSTER SOUP, NO. 2 1 cup of oysters 1 1/2 cups of thin white sauce 1/2 cup of cold water Pour the water over the oysters and remove bits of shell. Strain the water through two folds of cheese cloth. Heat it to the boiling point, add the oysters and again heat to the boiling point; stir into the hot sauce. A slice of onion and stalk of celery, scalded in the sauce, make a variation of flavor.
OYSTER STEW 1/2 cup of cold water 1/2 teaspoonful of white or 1 pint of oysters black pepper 1 1/2 cups of hot milk or water 3 tablespoonfuls of butter 1/2 teaspoonful of salt 1/4 cup of cracker crumbs Pour the cold water over the oysters, rinse each and remove bits of shell; add the hot liquid and bring quickly to the boiling point; add the butter, seasonings and crumbs and serve at once.
Two oyster soups from the same page, both built on the same principle: the oysters go in last and stay in the pot for as little time as possible. Everything else is seasoning.
- Thin white sauceIn this period a thin white sauce is 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour cooked together, then whisked into 1 cup of milk, with salt and pepper. For 1 1/2 cups, scale to about 1 1/2 tablespoons each of butter and flour. It should coat a spoon barely, not cling to it.
- The hinge"Heat to the boiling point" means exactly that and no further. Oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle, roughly 1 to 2 minutes; held at a simmer they tighten into rubber and weep liquid that thins the soup.
- Buy them shucked, in liquorThe cold-water rinse and the cheesecloth straining are there because oysters came home in the shell or loose in a pail with grit. A tub of shucked oysters needs only a look-over for shell fragments, and the liquor in the tub is worth keeping and straining rather than discarding.
- Don't throw out the waterIn the cream soup the half cup of water is not a rinse to be poured away. It has taken up oyster liquor, and it is strained, boiled and becomes part of the soup. Only the shell bits are lost.
- Cracker crumbsCoarsely crushed soda or oyster crackers, not fine fresh breadcrumbs. They are the thickener in the stew, which has no roux, and they will keep swelling, so serve the stew immediately or it turns to porridge.
- Scalding the aromaticsFor the variation, the recipe scalds the onion slice and celery stalk in the sauce itself; strain them out before serving, since leaving them in the finished sauce gives you nothing but obstacles.
- YieldEach of these makes about two servings, as a first course or a light supper with crackers. A pint of shucked oysters is somewhere around 16 to 24 medium ones, depending on size.
- Salt lastOyster liquor and the cracker crumbs both carry salt. Taste after the oysters have gone in, not before.
Oyster stew of this kind — milk, butter, pepper, crackers, and almost nothing else — was ordinary American cold-weather food in the nineteenth century, when oysters were cheap, abundant along the Atlantic coast, and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans. Its reputation as a Christmas Eve and New Year's dish in many American families is generally traced to that period of plenty rather than to any single origin. The numbering of "No. 2" is a habit of the era's cookery writers, who catalogued variations of a standard dish rather than naming each one, and the whole chapter rests on the white sauce and cracker-thickened milk broth that were the backbone of plain American cooking.