Raw Oysters
Take each oyster separately on a fork and drain from the liquor. Place on the table in an oyster tureen or salad bowl; have near a pile of small oblong dishes; scraped horseradish, pepper sauce, and Worcestershire sauce, etc, so that after being helped, each guest may season to taste. When oysters are transported some distance, it is well to boil the liquor from which they have been taken and pour over them: this makes them plump and prevents them from being slimy.--Mrs. S. T.
This is a serving method rather than a cooked dish, and the part that dates it most is not the horseradish but the handling of oysters that have travelled.
- Why the revival trick failsBoiling the liquor and pouring it back over shucked oysters does not cook them; hot liquor may warm them briefly but will not bring them anywhere near a safe temperature, and the recipe does not say whether it is cooled before use. What the treatment does, on the book's own account, is restore plumpness and remove the sliminess that can be a sign an oyster has been out of the cold too long -- which would mask one of the few warnings available to the eater.
- VibrioRaw oysters concentrate Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus from the water they filter. Both multiply quickly in shucked oysters held above about 40F, and V. vulnificus infection is dangerous out of proportion to the amount eaten, particularly for anyone with liver disease, diabetes, haemochromatosis or a suppressed immune system.
- Norovirus and hepatitis AOysters from water contaminated by sewage carry both, and neither is affected by chilling. Nineteenth-century beds around Chesapeake and coastal cities had no sanitary survey behind them; modern shellfish safety rests almost entirely on where the oyster was harvested and whether the water was certified at the time.
- Shucked and shippedThe recipe assumes oysters arrive already out of the shell, and the reference to transport over some distance points to shipment inland. Shucked oysters have no protective shell and a much larger exposed surface, and the reliability of icing on such journeys varied. That is the specific condition the caution addresses, not the eating of raw oysters as such.
- The table serviceTurning the whole lot into a tureen or salad bowl and letting guests help themselves over the course of a meal leaves raw shellfish standing at room temperature, conditions in which bacterial counts rise.
- If you want raw oystersUse a current source: shellfish bought in the shell with the dealer's harvest tag intact, kept cold, and shucked immediately before serving. Follow a modern guide for handling and for who should avoid them altogether.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives, which is why so many entries close with an initialled attribution like Mrs. S. T. Oysters run through the book because the Chesapeake was then the greatest oyster fishery in the world; the 1880s dredging boom sent barrels of shucked Virginia and Maryland oysters inland by rail, and oyster cellars and oyster suppers were fixtures of towns hundreds of miles from salt water. The accompaniments listed here \—pepper sauce, scraped horseradish, Worcestershire\—are the standard American raw bar condiments of the period, and Worcestershire in particular is often said to have been common in well-stocked Southern households by mid-century, though the evidence for general household practice is uncertain. The remark about oysters transported some distance is the most revealing line on the page: it is a household workaround for the absence of mechanical refrigeration, and it shows how far dealers and cooks were willing to go to make a long-hauled shellfish presentable.