Home › Cookery › Puree of Oysters
Puree of Oysters
For fifty oysters. Put the oysters on in their own liquor--let them come to a boil--take them out and mince them; skim the liquor when nearly done. Beat well together: 1 egg. 1 dessertspoonful butter. 1/2 pint milk. 1 cracker sifted. Salt, pepper (mace, also, if liked).
Pour this into boiling liquor and then add the minced oysters. When done, the soup is smooth. The milk must be fresh or it will curdle.--Mrs. John Walker, Alabama.
A thin oyster soup thickened with cracker and egg rather than flour. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes, and nearly all the risk is in the last two.
- The hinge: never let it boil after the egg goes inThe egg and milk mixture is poured into boiling liquor, but once it is in, hold the pot just below a simmer. A hard boil scrambles the egg into threads and the soup will not be "smooth" as promised.
- Fifty oystersDepending on size, somewhere between a quart and a quart and a half of shucked oysters with their liquor (a quart weighs roughly 2 lb), enough for four as a first course. If your oysters come drained, the liquor can be topped up with bottled clam juice or water; the recipe does not specify a quantity.
- Cook the oysters barely at allBring them to a boil in their liquor and lift them out immediately. Anything past the point where the edges ruffle turns them tough, and they get a second brief heating at the end.
- "1 cracker sifted"One large soda or water cracker crushed and passed through a sieve, giving a couple of tablespoons of fine crumbs at most. A plain saltine or water biscuit is the nearest current equivalent; the crumb is the only thickener here, so the soup stays light.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons. Old dessertspoons sit between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, and the measure appears throughout this book.
- Skim the liquorOyster liquor throws grey foam and grit as it heats. Skim it and, if the oysters were sandy, pour the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before building the soup.
- Salt lastThe liquor and the crackers are both salty. Season only after the soup has come together.
- Mace, if likedGround mace is the older partner to oysters and cream, generally reckoned more delicate than nutmeg. A pinch is enough for a quart.
- "The milk must be fresh"A live concern in 1879, when milk soured quickly and acid milk curdled on contact with hot salty liquor. With fresh pasteurised milk the risk is much reduced, but still warm it gently and keep the pot off a rolling boil. Whole milk holds better than skim.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879; its title page advertises contributions from two hundred and fifty of Virginia's noted housewives, though in practice the contributors reached well beyond the state, which is how a Virginia book comes to carry a recipe credited to a Mrs. John Walker of Alabama. "Puree" here is used in its older, looser sense of a soup made smooth by sieved or minced solids rather than strained to velvet in the French manner; the sifted cracker doing the thickening is a common American touch, cracker crumbs frequently standing in for a flour roux in oyster cookery. Oysters were cheap and abundant in the Chesapeake and Gulf trades of the period, sold by the count and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, so a recipe calling for fifty of them was an everyday proposition rather than a luxury. The warning about fresh milk is a reminder that this was written for a kitchen without refrigeration.