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Oyster Soup
1 quart oysters 1 quart milk 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt pepper Drain oysters through wire strainer, saving liquor. Wash them in cold water, using 2 cups to each quart oysters. Examine each oyster carefully for bits of shell. Put the reserved liquor on to boil, skim and strain through double cheesecloth. Scald milk, thicken with flour and fat cooked together. Heat oysters in the cleared liquor until they grow plump and edges curl. Combine them with milk mixture and serve. Eight large servings.
A plain oyster stew that depends on two things: keeping the oyster liquor and not overcooking the oysters. Both are easy to get wrong.
- Stop the moment the edges curlOysters need one to two minutes in barely simmering liquor. Held longer they tighten and turn rubbery, and no amount of milk will soften them again.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A quart runs to roughly 2 lb with its liquor, somewhere in the range of 30-50 oysters depending on size, or about two of the pint tubs of shucked oysters sold at a fish counter.
- Do not lose the liquorThe liquor carries most of the flavour. Strain it through a coffee filter or doubled cheesecloth after skimming; the sediment is grit, and it will be gritty in the bowl if you skip this.
- Washing the oystersThe 2 cups of cold water per quart is a quick rinse to float off shell fragments, not a soak. Drain them promptly and do not add the rinse water to the pot.
- "Fat" means the butterThe 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour are cooked together into a pale roux, then whisked into the scalded milk. Cook it a minute or two so the soup does not taste of raw flour.
- Scalded milkHeat the milk to about 180F, when it steams and shows bubbles at the rim. Whole milk is what the recipe assumes; replacing part of it with cream gives a richer soup.
- Keep it below a boilOnce the oysters and their liquor meet the milk, hold the pot at a bare steam. Boiling the salty oyster liquor into milk encourages curdling and toughens the oysters further.
- Seasoning and yieldThe recipe measures 1 teaspoon of salt but leaves the pepper unmeasured; a quarter teaspoon of white pepper is a starting point, and taste before adding all the salt, since the oyster liquor is already saline. Eight servings as written, or four as a main course with crackers.