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Oysters a la D'Uxelles
1 pint oysters 2 tablespoons chopped mushrooms 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice Few grains cayenne 1 egg yolk 1 tablespoon Sherry wine Clean oysters, heat to boiling-point, and drain. Reserve liquor and strain through double thickness of cheese-cloth; there should be three-fourths cup. Cook butter and mushrooms five minutes, add flour, and oyster liquor gradually; then cook three minutes. Add seasonings, oysters, egg, and Sherry wine. Serve on zephyrettes or pieces of toasted bread.
A small, rich oyster entree built on a velouté made with the oysters' own liquor. Everything hinges on brief cooking: the oysters are barely heated, and the sauce must not boil once the yolk goes in.
- The oysters"Heat to boiling-point" means bring them just to the point where the edges ruffle, then drain at once. A pint of shucked oysters is somewhere between about sixteen and two dozen, depending on size and grade; held any longer over heat they tighten and turn rubbery.
- The liquorStraining through doubled cheesecloth catches shell grit and is worth doing. If the drained liquor falls short of the three-fourths cup called for, make up the difference with cream or light stock rather than water, which dilutes the flavour.
- Egg yolkThe recipe says only "add egg." Temper the yolk with a few spoonfuls of the hot sauce first, then stir it back in off the heat. Once the yolk is in, the sauce must stay below a simmer or it will curdle.
- SherryAdded at the end, uncooked, so use a dry or medium sherry you would drink. Cooking sherry sold with added salt will throw the seasoning off, since the oyster liquor is already salty.
- ZephyrettesA thin, crisp cracker or wafer of the period, apparently a bought item rather than something made at home. Any plain crisp cracker or a round of buttered toast serves the same purpose: a dry base under a loose sauce.
- MushroomsTwo tablespoons chopped mushrooms cooked in butter is close to a small duxelles, though without the shallot usually part of one. Cook off their moisture before adding the flour, or the sauce will be watery.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantities suggest roughly four small first-course servings, or two as a light main dish. It does not reheat; make it immediately before serving.
The name points to a duxelles, the mince of mushrooms cooked down in butter that runs through French cookery as a base and a stuffing. It is traditionally traced to the kitchen of the Marquis d'Uxelles, a seventeenth-century French nobleman whose cook is generally said to have been François Pierre La Varenne, though the attribution is customary rather than documented. By the time this book was written, American cookery schools had absorbed a working vocabulary of French sauce technique and applied it freely to native ingredients — here, a domestic pint of shucked oysters dressed in a velouté made from their own liquor and served on a cracker, the sort of small, quickly assembled entree that filled the middle of a multi-course dinner.