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Oysters a la Snowdon (for chafing-dish)
Heat one quart of cream, seasoned to taste with celery salt, paprika and a few drops of tabasco. When very hot place in cream about a pint and a half of large selected oysters, thoroughly drained, and let stand until a trifle curled. Then add two or three tablespoons of Madeira and serve in hot plates. -Mrs Walter Snowdon Smith.
A Little Oyster Stew Put into the chafing-dish two tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of flour. Stir with a whisk till like a paste, then pour in one cup of strained oyster liquid and four tablespoons of cream.
When it begins to boil add twenty oysters and a dust of paprika and salt. Put on the lid and allow the stew to cook for about two minutes. Then the gills will be curled up. Serve in bouillon cups with saltine wafers.
Two chafing-dish oyster dishes, both built on the same principle: the oysters cook in seconds and the cook's only job is to stop before they toughen. A few things need translating.
- The chafing dishThis is tableside cookery over a spirit lamp or alcohol burner — gentle, indirect, slow to recover heat. A heavy saucepan or a small enameled pan over low heat does the same work. Warm the plates or bouillon cups first; the whole point of the dish is that nothing cools.
- Keep the cream hotThe first recipe says to add the oysters to very hot cream and "let stand." Over a weak burner that can mean the liquid drops out of range while raw shellfish sits in it. Hold it at a bare simmer — small bubbles at the edge — until the oysters plump and their edges ruffle, roughly two to three minutes.
- Do not let it boil hardA rolling boil shrinks oysters into rubber and can curdle cream that has been acidulated with tabasco and Madeira. The curled frill on the oyster is the doneness signal; pull them the moment it appears.
- "Large selected" oystersAn old grading term for shucked oysters sorted by size, broadly the equivalent of today's "selects," commonly reckoned at about 20 to 26 to the pint. A pint and a half would then be somewhere around 30 to 40 oysters, or about one and a half 16-oz containers of shucked oysters.
- Proportions to reconsiderA quart of cream to a pint and a half of oysters gives a very thin, very rich soup; it will serve eight to ten as a first course. Halving the cream produces something closer to what most people now expect from an oyster stew without changing the method.
- Madeira at the endAdded off the heat or just before serving so the alcohol does not cook off entirely. A dry or medium-dry Madeira (Sercial or Verdelho) suits it; the sweet styles turn the cream cloying.
- "The gills will be curled up"The frilly dark edge of an oyster is the mantle, not the gills, but the visual cue is exactly right. Two minutes under a lid is enough for twenty oysters in a cup of liquid.
- Oyster liquidThe liquor from the container, strained through a fine sieve or cloth to catch shell grit. If there is not a full cup, top it up with bottled clam juice rather than water — plain water flattens the roux.
- Saltine wafersThe thin soda crackers of the period; modern saltines, oyster crackers or a plain water biscuit all serve the same purpose.
Oysters were the cheap protein of late nineteenth-century American cities, sold from barrels and carts by the hundred, and the chafing dish was a fashionable apparatus of the 1890s and 1900s — a way for hostesses to cook at the table rather than in the kitchen. That combination produced dozens of recipes like these: a handful of ingredients, two minutes of attention, and a name honoring whoever contributed it. The dish here is credited to Mrs. Walter Snowdon Smith. Tabasco sauce had been commercially available since the late 1860s but only became a routine pantry item nearer the turn of the century, and celery salt was likewise a relatively new convenience product; together with the Madeira they suggest a date around 1900. Madeira had long been a staple fortified wine in American cooking, though sherry became more common later.