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One Tomato (Ounce of Butter)
One ounce of Butter.
One ounce of Flour.
One gill of Stock.
One teaspoonful of chopped Shalots and Mushrooms. Pepper and Salt.
A little Cayenne.
A few drops of Lemon-juice.
Some Croûtes of Bread (about 6 or 8); or, Rounds of Pastry (lightly browned).
Take the oysters, just cook them in their liquor, then strain them, take off the beards and cut each oyster into four pieces; put the butter and flour into a stewpan, add the chopped shalots and mushrooms, and when these are well cooked stir in the tomato previously rubbed through a sieve, add the stock and oyster liquor, pepper, salt, cayenne and lemon juice, a tablespoonful of cream, and then the pieces of oyster. Place a little of this mixture on each croûte, and lay a fillet of anchovy across the top.
A late-Victorian savoury — the small hot course served after the sweet. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete: the oysters and the tomato of the title appear only in the method, with no quantities given.
- Missing quantitiesThe title supplies one tomato and one ounce of butter, but no number of oysters is stated anywhere. For 6–8 croûtes, allow 8–12 oysters; any figure is a reconstruction, not the original's.
- A gillA quarter of a pint: in British usage 5 imperial fl oz, about 140 ml (some sources reckon a gill at 4 fl oz). With the oyster liquor added the sauce should be thick enough to sit on toast without running off.
- ShalotsShallots. A teaspoonful of shallot and mushroom chopped together is small — sweat them gently in the butter and flour rather than browning, or the pale sauce turns muddy.
- The hinge: cooking the oysters"Just cook them" means until the edges ruffle, well under two minutes in their own liquor. They then go into the finished sauce off the heat, purely to warm through. Any real simmering after that and they seize into rubber.
- BeardsThe dark frill of gill tissue around the oyster. The recipe directs that it be taken off as tough; it is in fact edible.
- Rubbed through a sievePeel and seed the tomato and push the flesh through a fine sieve, or blitz and strain. The point is a smooth purée with no skin or pips, not a chopped tomato.
- CroûtesRounds of bread, fried in butter or baked until crisp and dry — not soft toast, which collapses under a wet mixture. The recipe wants the pastry rounds lightly browned before filling.
- SeasoningAnchovy fillets and oyster liquor are both salty. Season the sauce lightly and taste after the anchovy goes on.
- Yield and timingSix to eight croûtes, one or two per person as a savoury. Assemble at the last moment and serve hot; the bases soften within minutes.
The savoury was a fixture of the British dinner in the last decades of the nineteenth century: a single hot, salty mouthful on toast or pastry served after the sweet and before dessert fruit. Oysters were a natural material for it, and they turn up in dozens of these small dishes alongside anchovy. The combination here of oyster, tomato, shallot, mushroom, anchovy and a spoonful of cream belongs to a style of cookery in which a strained tomato purée was treated as a sauce ingredient rather than a vegetable in its own right. The recipe relies on stock, sieved purée and croûtes prepared in advance: almost everything is done before service, and only the oysters go in at the last moment.