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Fricassee of Oysters
Put one quart, or twenty-five, oysters on the fire in their own liquor. The moment it begins to boil, turn it into a hot dish through a colander, leaving the oysters in the colander. Put into the saucepan two ounces of butter (size of an egg) and when it bubbles sprinkle in one ounce (a tablespoon) of sifted flour; let it cook a minute without taking color, stirring it well with a wire eggwhisk; then add, mixing well, a cup of oyster liquor. Take it from the fire and mix in the yolks of two eggs, a little salt, a very little cayenne pepper, one teaspoon of lemon juice, and one grating of nutmeg. Beat it well; then return it to the fire to set the eggs, without allowing it to boil. Put in the oysters.
These oysters may be served on thin slices of toast for breakfast or tea, or in papers, or as a filling for patties for dinner.
A classic oyster velouté finished with egg yolks. The whole dish rests on heat control: the oysters are barely cooked, and the sauce must never boil once the yolks go in.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksOnce the two yolks are stirred in, keep the pan below a simmer — roughly 160–175F — until the sauce visibly thickens and coats the spoon. A boil will scramble the yolks into grains that no amount of whisking will smooth out.
- Oyster timingThe instruction to drain them "the moment it begins to boil" is exact and deliberate. Shucked oysters need well under a minute; their edges should just ruffle. Anything longer and they shrink and turn rubbery, so add them to the sauce only at the very end, keeping it below a simmer, and serve at once.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A quart is about 950 ml and, as the recipe says, around 25 medium oysters. Four 8-oz tubs (or two 16-oz tubs) of shucked oysters with their liquor will do it.
- Butter and flour by weightThe parenthetical equivalents are period shorthand and run generous. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; one ounce of flour is nearer 3 to 4 level tablespoons than the single tablespoon given. Use 4 tablespoons butter to 3 tablespoons flour for a sauce that will hold.
- Cooking the roux"Let it cook a minute without taking color" means a white roux — no browning. A minute over medium heat is enough to lose the raw flour taste. A whisk, as specified, works better here than a spoon.
- If you are short of liquorTwenty-five oysters may not yield a full cup of liquor. Make up any difference with bottled clam juice, light fish stock, or milk or cream, which suits the yolk finish.
- "In papers"Cases of folded and buttered paper, baked briefly to set, of a piece with cooking en papillote. Small vol-au-vent shells or baked puff pastry cases are the practical modern equivalent, and the recipe already offers them as the dinner option.
- YieldEnough for four on toast at breakfast or supper, or six as a patty filling.
"Fricassee" in nineteenth-century American cookery meant meat or shellfish cooked gently and bound in its own sauce, usually a white one enriched with egg yolks and sharpened with lemon — the French fricassée à blanc, applied here to oysters rather than chicken or veal. The dish belongs to the era when oysters were among the cheapest animal foods in the eastern United States: beds in the Chesapeake and around New York supplied them by the barrel, and shucked oysters were sold by the quart in cities the way milk was. That abundance explains why a book like this treats them as an everyday breakfast and tea dish, served on toast, and why the same recipe stretches upward to patty cases for a formal dinner. The style of the sauce — a pale roux, a whisk specified rather than a spoon, cayenne and nutmeg in trace amounts — reflects the growing influence of French professional technique on American domestic manuals.