Home › Bridge Party Menus › Creamed Oysters and Mushrooms
Creamed Oysters and Mushrooms
2 dozen oysters oyster liquor 1 1/2 cups milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup mushrooms 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon onion juice 2 egg yolks, beaten light 2 tablespoons shortening Drain oysters and place in hot pan with a teaspoon shortening. Toss them till they are plumped and ruffled on both sides, then place in hot dish. Add to the oyster liquor the milk and flour and cook till thick. Add chopped mushrooms and cook two minutes. Add other ingredients in order named, then the oysters. Bring to the boiling point and pour over hot buttered toast. Serves 6.
A quick chafing-dish style creamed oyster for a light luncheon. Everything hangs on heat control at the end, where the original wording will work against you.
- Do not boil after the yolks go inThe instruction to "bring to the boiling point" comes after the beaten yolks have been added, which will scramble them into grainy threads. Add the yolks off the heat, tempering them with a little of the hot sauce first, and return the pan only to a bare steam.
- Oysters cook twice hereThey are already plumped and ruffled in the pan, so their second turn in the sauce should be seconds, not minutes. Fold them in at the very end and serve; extended reheating makes them tough and weeps liquid into the sauce.
- Two dozen oystersShucked, that is roughly a pint of oysters with their liquor; drained, somewhat less than a pound of oyster meat. Reserve every drop of the liquor, since it and the milk are the whole body of the sauce.
- The liquor is unmeasuredThe recipe assumes whatever comes with the oysters, usually 1/3 to 1/2 cup. If yours are unusually juicy the sauce will be thin, which brings up the next point.
- One tablespoon of flour is very littleFor 1 1/2 cups milk plus the liquor this yields a pourable sauce meant to soak the toast rather than sit on it. If you want it to hold, use 2 to 3 tablespoons flour cooked in the shortening as a roux before the liquids go in.
- Shortening"Shortening" in older American recipes may mean lard or a solid vegetable fat; butter is better here. Note that the ingredient list calls for 2 tablespoons while the method directs only a teaspoon into the oyster pan; the balance belongs in the sauce.
- Onion juiceGrate half a small onion on a fine rasp and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze the grated flesh in a cloth. A teaspoon is enough to season without any raw onion texture.
- MushroomsOne cup chopped raw mushrooms is roughly 3 oz. Two minutes is enough to lose the raw taste in the sauce.
- ServingServes 6 over buttered toast, which should be made and buttered while the sauce finishes.
Creamed oysters suited informal American entertaining, where a hostess needed something hot that could be assembled in one pan and ladled over toast without carving, gravy or a seating plan. Bridge was a widespread social fixture in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, and light creamed dishes of this kind -- creamed chicken, creamed sweetbreads, creamed crab, and this -- were staples of such menus. Oysters travelled inland packed in ice by rail, which is part of why a dish that now reads as extravagant could sit in an afternoon menu. The touches of lemon and onion juice, rather than sliced onion or herbs, are characteristic of a taste for seasoning that could not be seen on the plate.