Home › Cookery › Stewed Oysters
Stewed Oysters
Put butter, salt and pepper in a stew-pan, and put the oysters to the butter and stew until perfectly done.--Mrs. D.
Stewed Oysters.
Take one-quarter pound nice butter, put it in a pan and melt, then pepper and salt, add a small piece of cheese. When it is all melted add one pint of oyster liquor, and boil; when hot, strain and put back in pan, then add oysters and boil five minutes.--Mr. K. N.
Stewed Oysters.
Pour into a stew-pan 1/2 gallon oysters. 2 tablespoonfuls pepper vinegar. 1 teaspoonful black pepper. 1 teaspoonful salt.
Let them simmer until the oysters are plump; take them out with a fork and drop them into a tureen, on a handful of crackers and three heaping tablespoonfuls fresh butter.
Pour one pint milk to the liquor, let it boil up and strain it on the oysters. Rinse out the stew-pan and pour the oysters, liquor, etc., back into it, and set it on the fire. When it comes to a boil, serve.
This method deprives the oysters of the bits of shell.--Mrs. S.T. To Stew Oysters.
Put into the kettle one pint liquor, one-half pound butter, and pepper. Let it boil, then put in the oysters, after draining them in a colander. They will be done as soon as they boil up, or when they curl right well. When ready to take up, add half teacup cracker crumbs and a little salt in the stew.--Mrs. P.W. To Stew Oysters.
Put into a shallow stew-pan the oysters. As soon as the gills begin to open pour off all the liquor. Continue to cook them, stirring all the time until done. The liquor that was poured off must be thickened with a good lump of butter rubbed up with flour, and seasoned with pepper and salt, and poured boiling-hot onto the oysters.
The advantage of this way of cooking is that the oysters become large and plump.--Mrs. Dr. E. R.
To Cook Oysters. 1/2 gallon oysters. 1 quart fresh milk. 1/2 pound butter. 1 tablespoonful flour. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 teaspoonful pepper. 1 egg. Rub the egg and flour together and thin with a little of the milk. Mix the oysters, pepper and salt, and let them come to a boil; then add the milk, and when this boils add the egg and flour with the butter. Let the whole boil three minutes.--Miss N. S. L.
Six contributors, six oyster stews, and the differences between them are the interesting part. The one thing they agree on is the doneness cue: the oysters plump and their edges ruffle, and that is the moment to stop.
- Timing is the hingeIgnore the five-minute and three-minute boils. Shucked oysters are done when the mantle edges curl and the flesh turns opaque, roughly 1-2 minutes in hot liquid; past that they shrink and turn rubbery. Mrs. P.W.'s "when they curl right well" is the reliable instruction here; Mrs. Dr. E. R.'s "as soon as the gills begin to open" marks the moment to pour off the liquor rather than the end of cooking.
- Quantities and unitsA half gallon of oysters means shucked oysters with their liquor, enough for 8 to 10 bowls. A teacup in recipes of this period is usually reckoned at somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup. Spoon measures were often rounded rather than level, so probably a little more than a modern level tablespoon.
- The butter is not a typoMiss N. S. L. puts half a pound of butter to half a gallon of oysters, and Mrs. P.W. the same half pound to a pint of liquor; the quantity is deliberate, not a slip. It reads as extravagant now; 4 to 6 tablespoons gives a rich stew without a slick of fat on top.
- Two tablespoons of pepper vinegarMrs. S.T. means the household bottle of hot peppers steeped in vinegar, closer to a thin pepper vinegar than to modern commercial hot sauce. Start with a teaspoon or two and taste.
- Oyster liquor and gritMrs. S.T. lifts the oysters out, strains the liquor and milk back over them, and rinses the pan before returning everything to the fire; as she says, this "deprives the oysters of the bits of shell," and it is worth keeping whatever version you follow. Shucked oysters carry shell fragments and sand; strain the liquor through a fine sieve or cloth before it goes back over the oysters.
- Milk and curdlingOyster liquor is salty and slightly acid, and a hard boil after the milk goes in will break it. Heat the milk separately and combine off a rolling boil. Miss N. S. L.'s egg-and-flour liaison needs the same care -- temper it with warm milk, add it at a bare simmer, and do not let it boil for three minutes or you will have sweet scrambled egg in the broth.
- The cheeseMr. K. N. adds "a small piece of cheese" without naming it; a firm aged cheese such as cheddar is the likeliest reading. An ounce or two is plenty, and it wants to melt into the butter before any liquid arrives.
- CrackersMrs. S.T. drops the oysters onto a handful of crackers in the tureen; Mrs. P.W. stirs half a teacup of cracker crumbs into the stew at the end. Plain unsalted soda or oyster crackers do the job; allow for the salt they add and season at the end.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, reads exactly as this page does -- half a dozen neighbors' versions of the same dish set side by side, with no editor deciding between them, the contributions here signed only with initials. Oysters justified that treatment in tidewater Virginia: the Chesapeake beds were among the most productive in the world in the decades after the Civil War, oysters travelled inland by rail in barrels and cans, and a stew was cheap enough for a weeknight and grand enough for a supper table. The variations record real domestic preferences -- whether to poach the oysters in their own liquor or in milk, whether to thicken with flour, egg, cracker or nothing at all, and whether the liquor is strained once or twice. Two of the six warn about shell fragments, and two describe the oysters becoming "large and plump" as the sign of success; all of them season.