Oyster Stew
1 quart oysters 1 quart milk 4 tablespoons butter salt and pepper 4 tablespoons cracker crumbs Drain oysters from liquor; heat liquor to boiling point. Skim. Scald milk in double boiler; add liquor and oysters; cook until edges of the oysters shrivel; add butter, salt and pepper. Serve at once.
If cracker crumbs are used, combine butter and cracker crumbs and add to oyster mixture.
Oysters and oyster liquor must not be added to milk until just before serving, as the mixture is apt to curdle if the oysters are allowed to stand in the milk. 1 quart oysters 12 slices bacon
A plain milk stew that lives or dies on two things: not overcooking the oysters, and not letting them sit in the milk. Everything else is seasoning.
- The hinge: add oysters lastThe note at the end is the whole technique. Oyster liquor is salty and slightly acidic, and hot milk can break when the oysters are left standing in it, so liquor and oysters go in just before serving. Combine them earlier and you risk a curdled, grainy stew rather than a smooth one.
- "Cook until edges shrivel"That is 1 to 2 minutes in barely simmering liquid, and it happens fast. Past that point the oysters tighten into rubber and leak their liquid into the milk. Pull the pan the instant the frills curl.
- A quart of oystersThis means shucked oysters with their liquor, sold by volume in the period and still sold that way in tubs — about 2 lb, or roughly 3 to 4 dozen depending on size. If you buy them in the shell, allow 6 to 8 lb of medium shells.
- Scalding the milkScalded means about 180°F, hot but not boiling, with a ring of small bubbles at the edge. The double boiler is there because direct heat scorches milk on a thin pan; a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat does the same job with attention.
- Skimming the liquorBringing the liquor to a boil coagulates albumin, which rises as grey scum; skim it. Grit settles, or can be caught by pouring the heated liquor through a fine sieve or coffee filter — either way this step is what keeps sand out of the bowl.
- Cracker crumbsCommon crackers of the period were dry and bland, with little salt; the closest modern equivalent is a plain soda cracker or oyster cracker, crushed fine. Creaming them with the butter first keeps them from clumping, and they thicken the stew slightly.
- Salt lastOyster liquor carries a good deal of salt and its strength varies with the beds, so taste at the end.
- YieldTwo quarts of finished stew, serving 4 generously as a main course or 6 as a first course.
- A stray lineThe "1 quart oysters, 12 slices bacon" at the close belongs to the next recipe in the book, not to this one. Ignore it here.
History: Oyster stew of this shape — oysters, milk or cream, butter, salt, crackers — was among the plainest and most widespread American oyster dishes of the nineteenth century, when oysters were cheap urban food rather than a luxury. Beds in Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound supplied shucked oysters by the barrel to inland cities by rail and ice, which is why a cookbook of this kind could assume a quart of them in the reader's kitchen without comment. The habit of serving the stew with dry crackers on the side, or crumbled in, is old enough that the small round cracker still sold as an 'oyster cracker' is generally said to take its name from the pairing. The dish's association with Christmas Eve and with New England church suppers is traditional and much repeated; the version here is simply the workaday one, and its only refinement is the warning about curdling.