Oyster Pie
Stew the oysters, not entirely done, with butter, pepper and one tablespoonful pepper-sauce, and salt. Make a paste of one pound flour and one-half pound butter. Line the dish and put in the oysters, grate bread crumbs over top, and bake.--Mrs. T.
Oyster Pie.
Put a paste in a deep dish. Wash the oysters, drain and put them in the dish, seasoning with butter, pepper, salt, and a little mace, if liked; then put in a layer of grated cracker. When the dish is full, cover with paste and slips of paste laid across; then bake.--Mrs. W--.
Two versions from two contributors: the first stews the oysters briefly before they go into an open pie, the second bakes them raw under a full lid of pastry. Neither gives an oven temperature or a time, and both assume you know that oysters are ruined by long cooking.
- The hinge: oysters cook in minutesOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle, roughly two minutes in butter. Mrs. T's "not entirely done" is the whole instruction — they finish in the oven, and anything longer than that turns them tough and shrunken in their own leaked liquor.
- The pasteOne pound flour to half a pound butter is about 4 cups flour to 2 sticks (8 oz) butter, plus salt and ice water — a rich short crust, not puff pastry. It is stiff enough to line a deep dish and to cut into the "slips of paste laid across" that lattice Mrs. W's top.
- Oven heatNeither cook gives a heat or a time. On a modern range, a hot oven of about 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the crust, then 375F until the top is browned, works; reckon on 30 to 40 minutes in total. Judge by the crust, not by the filling.
- Pepper-sauceIn this period the term generally indicates a pepper vinegar -- small hot pods steeped in vinegar, homemade or bought, kept on the table. A tablespoon of a thin vinegar-based hot sauce is the nearest thing; a thick modern chili paste is not.
- Drain the oysters wellBoth recipes assume shucked oysters in their liquor. Drain them hard, and reserve the liquor for a sauce rather than pouring it into the pie — it is the main cause of a raw, sodden bottom crust. Blind-baking the lined dish for 10 minutes helps.
- Crumbs and crackersGrated bread crumbs on Mrs. T's open pie are a browning topping. Mrs. W's "layer of grated cracker" between layers of oysters is a thickener, standing in for flour or a roux; unsalted soda crackers, crushed fine, are the equivalent.
- MaceThe dried outer covering of nutmeg, lighter and more floral than the seed. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace for a quart of oysters is enough; nutmeg will stand in for it if you use it sparingly.
- Quantity and yieldNeither cook says how many oysters. A quart of shucked oysters fills a deep 9-inch dish and serves six as a main course; the pastry quantity given will line and cover it with trimmings to spare.
Oyster pie is strongly associated with the Chesapeake, where oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by barrel through the nineteenth century, though the dish was common in England and along the American coast generally — Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) prints a long run of oyster receipts, fried, scalloped, pickled, curried and in pies, because a Virginia household could count on them all winter. Marion Cabell Tyree compiled the book from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, which is why the same dish appears twice in slightly different form and signed with initials; whatever the reason for the duplication, the effect is a record of how particular families did a particular thing. The pie itself descends from the English fish and meat pies of the previous century, where oysters were often a stretcher for beef or veal rather than the main event — here, in a place with more oysters than beef, they take over the dish entirely.