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To Roast Oysters
Wash and wipe one peck large shell oysters. Put in a hot oven, taking care to put the upper shell downward, so the juice will not escape. As soon as the shells open, lay on a hot dish and serve with horseradish or pepper-sauce, after sprinkling on them a little salt, and putting a bit of fresh butter on each oyster.--Mrs. S. T.
A four-line recipe that depends almost entirely on the cook's judgment of when to pull the oysters out. Two things matter: how the shells sit, and how briefly they stay in.
- A peck of oystersA peck is 8 dry quarts, a quarter of a bushel; in the shell that is on the order of 12 to 15 lb of oysters, though the count varies a good deal with size. Either way it is a party quantity, meant to be served in rounds straight from the oven. For four to six people a quarter of that is plenty.
- "A hot oven"Read this as a thoroughly heated oven, on the order of 450F; the book gives no temperatures. The point is to shock the shells open fast rather than slowly stew the meat, and a fully preheated oven or a hot grill with the lid down both work.
- Cup side downModern practice is to set the deeper, bowl-shaped shell underneath so it holds the liquor, and lift the flat shell off. Mrs. S. T.'s 'upper shell downward' is ambiguous, but her stated reason — 'so the juice will not escape' — points to the same end: the shell that holds the liquor goes down. Get it the other way round and the juice is lost.
- TimingGive no more than 6 to 10 minutes. The shells gape a little when the muscle relaxes, and that is the moment to stop; oysters left in until they curl and shrink turn dense and dry. They finish cooking in their own hot liquor on the way to the table.
- Shells that do not openSome will only crack a seam and need a knife to finish. But any oyster that was already open and would not shut when tapped before cooking should be thrown out — that is a dead oyster, and heat does not fix it.
- Washing and wipingScrub the shells under cold running water with a stiff brush. Grit left on the outside ends up in the liquor when the shell is opened at the table, which is the one flaw that ruins the dish.
- ServingHave the butter soft and the dish genuinely hot before the oysters come out. The horseradish is most likely plain grated horseradish rather than a creamed sauce, and 'pepper-sauce' in a Virginia kitchen of this date would generally have meant a thin vinegar infusion of hot peppers, not far from what is now sold as Louisiana-style hot sauce.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one carries the initials "Mrs. S. T." rather than a house style — the book is a compilation of what particular kitchens actually did. Roasting oysters in the shell is the oldest and least interfering way to cook them, and along the Chesapeake it was as much an outdoor social form as a recipe: oysters heaped on a sheet of iron over a fire, opened and eaten in relays while the next batch heated. The Tidewater oyster trade was near its peak in these decades, and the sheer quantity called for here — a peck at a time, sold by the bushel off the boats — reflects a period when shell oysters were cheap enough to be a staple rather than a luxury. The pairing with horseradish and vinegar-pepper sauce, instead of the butter-and-cream sauces the book uses elsewhere for oysters, marks this as the plain, hand-held version of the dish.