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CHAPTER XXXVI: Bisque
Oyster Bisque. 1 quart oysters, 1 quart milk, cupful bread crumbs, bay leaf, 1 sprig parsley, 1 slice onion, 1 quart thin cream, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 4 yolks eggs.
Parboil oysters in their own liquor until the edges curl. Drain and separate the hard part from the soft, chop the hard parts fine. Put the chopped oysters into a double boiler with milk, bread crumbs, bay leaf, parsley, and onion, and let cook half an hour. Rub through a purée strainer and return to fire with cream. Cream together butter and flour, and add gradually some of the hot soup. Add the soft parts of the oysters, season with pepper and salt, and pour into the tureen over the well-beaten yolks of eggs. Serve with crisp crackers, browned.
A classical two-part oyster soup: the tough muscle is cooked out into a purée for body, the tender parts go in at the end. It is generous — closer to eight servings than four.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksThe yolks are beaten in the tureen and the hot soup poured over them, which sets the liaison off the heat. If the soup goes back on the burner after that it will curdle into egg threads.
- The missing flourFlour appears in the method but not in the ingredient list. Two tablespoons butter creamed with two tablespoons flour matches the butter and suits the two quarts of milk and cream; treat the quantity as the cook's judgment, not a lost measurement.
- A quart of oystersThat means shucked oysters with their liquor, roughly two pints or about 2 lb — not a quart of oysters in the shell. Buy them in a tub from the fish counter and reserve every drop of liquor for the parboil.
- Parboil means seconds, not minutesThe edges curl in about a minute in their own simmering liquor. Oysters held longer shrink and turn to rubber, and the soft parts added at the end need no cooking at all beyond the heat of the soup.
- Hard and soft partsThe "hard part" is chiefly the tough adductor muscle; the "soft" is the rest of the oyster. Separating them is fussy work with small oysters — with large ones, simply trim off the tough muscle.
- Thin cream"Thin cream" of this period meant a light cream, somewhere in the region of 18 percent fat. Half-and-half is the nearest modern substitute; heavy cream will make the bisque heavier.
- Purée strainerA food mill or a fine sieve worked with a ladle. The point is to extract the oyster and bread solids as a smooth thickener, so press hard and discard only the bay leaf, parsley stem and onion fibre.
- Double boilerUsed because milk with bread crumbs scorches easily over half an hour. A heavy saucepan on low heat with occasional stirring does the same job faster.
- Raw yolksPouring the hot soup over the yolks in the tureen may not bring them reliably to 160F, especially if the tureen is cold. If serving anyone vulnerable to foodborne illness, use pasteurized yolks.
- Browned crackersOyster or soda crackers spread on a sheet pan and toasted in a moderate oven until golden, watching closely.
"Bisque" in American cookbooks of this period meant any rich, sieved, cream-bound soup, usually of shellfish; the word is often traced to Biscay, and sometimes to bis cuit, "twice cooked," which fits this method of cooking the oysters once for the pur e and warming them again in the finished soup. Oyster soups fill pages of turn-of-the-century household manuals because oysters were then cheap and shipped inland by rail in barrels and tins — a quart of shucked oysters was an everyday purchase, not a luxury. The egg-yolk liaison finished in the tureen is straight French service practice, and it marks this as a company dish: it must be assembled at the last moment and carried to the table at once.