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One Yolk of Egg (Blanch the oysters in their)
One and a half ounce of Butter. One ounce of Flour. One gill of Cream. A small blade of Mace. Twenty-four Oysters. Blanch the oysters in their own liquor, strain them, and take off the beards. Cook the flour and butter together, add one gill of oyster liquor, one gill of milk, and a small piece of mace, a E2 little salt, and a few drops of lemon-juice. When the flour is cooked, strain out the mace, add the cream, the yolk of egg, and the oysters. Let the oysters get hot through, and serve with sippets of bread round.
A creamed oyster ragout of the sort served in a pastry case or on toast at the end of a Victorian fish course. The recipe assumes you already know the proportions for a small white sauce, so the quantities need filling in.
- The hinge: barely cook the oysters"Blanch" here means lifting them into their own heated liquor only until the edges ruffle, perhaps 30 seconds, and "let the oysters get hot through" at the end means just that. Any real simmering after they go back into the sauce turns them tough and shrunken.
- A gillAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, a quarter of a pint; a US half-cup at 4 fl oz is close enough. You need two gills of liquid total, so about 10 fl oz of sauce base.
- Unstated amountsFor 10 fl oz of liquid, 1 oz butter (about 2 tablespoons) and 1 oz flour (about 3-4 tablespoons), plus 2-3 tablespoons of double cream at the end. Something in the region of 18-24 shucked oysters suits this quantity; the recipe gives no yield, but it would serve about four as a course.
- "Cook the flour and butter together"A white roux, cooked over low heat two or three minutes until it smells nutty but takes no colour. "When the flour is cooked" refers to the sauce afterwards: let it simmer gently until it loses any raw, pasty taste, five minutes or so.
- BeardsThe dark frill of gill tissue around a shucked oyster. It is edible but stringy in a pale sauce; pull it away after blanching, when it firms up and comes off cleanly.
- MaceA blade of mace, the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold whole as "blades". Strained out before the cream goes in, as directed. A pinch of ground mace works but cannot be removed, so use very little.
- The egg yolkOff the heat, or the sauce will scramble. Slacken the yolk with a spoonful of the hot sauce first, stir it back in, and keep the pan below a simmer from then on.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, fried in butter or toasted, stood around the edge of the dish. Cut them thin and add them at the moment of serving so they stay crisp.
- "E2"Not an ingredient. It appears to be a printer's signature mark from the foot of the page that has been carried into the middle of the sentence in transcription.
Oysters were still relatively cheap and plentiful in Britain through much of the nineteenth century, and a cook's repertoire was expected to include several ways of serving them off the shell: scalloped, in patty cases, in vol-au-vents, or, as here, bound in a white sauce enriched with yolk and cream. The style belongs to the French-influenced cookery of high-class Victorian kitchens. The title here looks like a fragment of the surrounding text rather than the dish's own name. The instruction to blanch in the oysters' own liquor rather than water keeps the shell liquor as the seasoning, with nothing of it thrown away. The English beds declined through overfishing and pollution in the later nineteenth century, and oysters grew progressively dearer.