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Creamed Oysters
1 pint oysters 1 1/2 cup white sauce Drain and clean the oysters, scald and strain the liquor; cook the oysters in the liquor until plump and the edges begin to curl, and drain; add to the white sauce. Add more seasoning if necessary. Let it heat to the boiling point and serve in Swedish timbales or in patty shells. It is nice used as a filling for short-cake, croustad or on toast.
A short, sound recipe that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the oysters. The book assumes you know its white sauce and its timbale cases; both need a word.
- The hinge: cook the oysters barely at allOysters are done the moment the edges ruffle, which in scalded liquor takes about a minute to two. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber and weep liquid into the sauce.
- A pint of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. Counts vary with size, but a pint is very roughly two dozen medium shucked oysters; modern refrigerated tubs are usually sold in 8 oz and 16 oz sizes, liquor included.
- White sauceA medium white sauce is conventionally 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 1 cup milk, cooked out and seasoned with salt and pepper; check the book's own proportions if given elsewhere. For 1 1/2 cups, use 3 tablespoons each and 1 1/2 cups milk.
- Scald and strain the liquorHeating the oyster liquor coagulates the grey scum and lets you strain out shell grit; pour it through a fine sieve or coffee filter. The recipe drains the oysters and does not call for the liquor to go into the sauce, though you can reduce the strained liquor and stir it in if you want more oyster flavour.
- "Heat to the boiling point"Take this as heating the assembled mixture through to just steaming. A real boil will curdle nothing but will finish the job of toughening the oysters.
- Croustade, timbale, patty shellA croustade is a hollowed fried or baked bread case; Swedish timbales are thin batter cups fried on an iron mould; patty shells are puff pastry cases. Any of these, or split baking-powder biscuits, or plain buttered toast.
- Seasoning'More seasoning if necessary' would ordinarily mean salt and pepper. Celery salt or paprika, a grating of nutmeg or a spoon of sherry are period-appropriate additions to a bland sauce.
- YieldServes four as a luncheon or supper dish, six if spooned into small pastry cases as a first course. Assemble and serve at once; it does not hold.
Creamed oysters belong to the era when oysters were cheap, plentiful and shipped inland by rail in barrels and sealed cans, making them a standard ingredient in Midwestern kitchens far from any coast. Cookbooks like this one leaned hard on white sauce as the all-purpose binder "one base sauce, a dozen fillings" and on the fashionable service vessels of the day: patty shells, croustades, and the Swedish timbale, a fluted batter cup fried on a long-handled iron and popular enough in American homes of the period that the irons appear in mail-order catalogues. The dish also shows how oysters were treated as a genteel luncheon food rather than a raw-bar indulgence, appropriate for ladies' lunches, church suppers and chafing-dish service. By mid-century, recipes like this had quietly disappeared from everyday household books.