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Steamed Oysters
Wash shell oysters perfectly clean; lay them on a steamer, so the juice will not escape from the shells when opened. It is best to lay the upper shells down. Cover the lid of the steamer with a coarse towel and press closely on. Set this over a pot of water boiling hard. In from twenty minutes to half an hour, the shells will have opened. Have ready a hot dish, on which lay the oysters; sprinkle over them a little salt and pepper with a bit of fresh butter on each oyster. Serve immediately.--Mrs. S.T.
A method rather than a formula: the whole recipe hinges on keeping the liquor in the shell and pulling the oysters off the heat the moment they gape.
- The time is far too longThe time is long -- twenty to thirty minutes will leave the meats shrunken and rubbery. Over hard-boiling water in a covered steamer the shells usually begin to gape in around five minutes, depending on size; give them a few minutes more after opening rather than pulling each one off the instant it cracks.
- Upper shells downOysters have one deep cupped shell and one flatter lid, and the original directs that the flat upper shell go down. The stated aim is to keep the liquor from escaping into the steamer water.
- The towel over the lidA coarse cloth pressed under the lid seals a loose-fitting nineteenth-century steamer. A modern pot lid seals well enough on its own, and a damp towel near a gas flame is a hazard not worth taking on.
- Sorting before cookingThe original assumes the oysters are alive. Discard any that are already gaping and will not close when tapped, and any with cracked shells, before they go into the steamer.
- Ones that stay shutAn oyster still clamped tight after the others have opened has usually died before cooking. Throw it out rather than prising it.
- Scrubbing"Perfectly clean" means a stiff brush under cold running water. Grit and mud on the outside of the shell ends up in the liquor the instant the shell cracks.
- Handling and seasoningUse a folded towel or tongs; the shells come out scalding and full of hot liquor. Season on the serving dish as written, with cold butter that melts into the liquor, and put out oyster knives so guests can free the meats themselves.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon on 6 to 8 oysters per person as a first course, or a dozen as a light supper, and steam in single layers so they open evenly.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like this one, comes out of a region where oysters were cheap, local and eaten constantly. Chesapeake Bay was the great oyster fishery of nineteenth-century America, which is why the book carries page after page of oyster cookery: fried, scalloped, in fritters, in pies, and plainly steamed like this. Steaming in the shell is among the simplest and least interfered-with of those methods, and it survives essentially unchanged at oyster roasts along the Atlantic coast today. The rule of eating shellfish only in months with an "r" in them, often repeated in books of this period, had a practical basis before refrigeration: warm-weather oysters spoil quickly and are also spawning, which leaves them thin and milky.