Oyster Soup
INGREDIENTS for soup for 12 persons.-3 quarts of good mutton broth, 6 dozen oysters, 2 oz. of butter, 1 oz. of flour. AVERAGE COST, 7s.
Beard the oysters and scald them in their own liquor; then add it, well strained, to the broth; thicken with the butter and flour, and simmer for 1/4 of an hour. Put in the oysters, stir well, but do not let it boil, and serve very hot.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE from September to April.
Oysters, Darioles of. INGREDIENTS for dish for 2 persons. -A dozen oysters, 1 oz. of flour, 1 oz. of butter, 2 eggs, pint of milk, seasoning of lemon-juice, salt, cayenne and nutmeg. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d.
Beard the oysters and scald them in their liquor, strain them and cut each into 4 pieces. Put the butter and flour in a saucepan, with the liquor from the oysters OYSTERS. and the milk, and stir till boiling; then add the seasoning and the eggs well beaten, and lastly the oysters. Butter some dariole moulds, well fill them with the mixture, and steam gently for 20 minutes.
TIME.-20 minutes to steam the darioles.
SEASONABLE from September to April.
A plain Victorian invalid-and-supper soup: mutton broth thickened lightly and finished with oysters at the last moment. Everything depends on the final step.
- Never let it boil once the oysters go inOysters toughen and shrink within about a minute of hard heat. Drop them into the finished soup off the boil, stir, and serve straight away; they need only to heat through.
- Scale it downThree quarts of broth to six dozen oysters serves twelve. For four, use 1 quart broth, 2 dozen oysters, and about 2/3 oz butter to 1/3 oz flour, keeping the recipe's two-to-one proportion of butter to flour.
- Mutton brothGood mutton broth was a standing item in a Victorian kitchen and gives the soup its backbone. Lamb stock is the nearest equivalent; a light chicken stock works but makes a much milder soup, and beef stock will bully the oysters.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frilly gill around the edge of the oyster. It is edible but stringy in a smooth soup; pull it off with the fingers or snip it with scissors.
- Straining the liquorOyster liquor carries grit and shell fragments. Strain it through muslin or a coffee filter before it goes into the broth, or the whole pot is spoiled.
- Buying oystersSix dozen shucked oysters is roughly 2-3 pints of meat with their liquor, depending on size. Tubbed shucked oysters from a fishmonger are the practical choice; keep the liquor, it is half the seasoning.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified for the soup, presumably because the oyster liquor and the broth were relied on for it. Taste after the liquor is in, then correct with salt and white pepper; a squeeze of lemon, as in the darioles recipe alongside, suits it.
- "Seasonable September to April"The old rule about months with an R is usually explained by wild oysters spawning in warm water and by the lack of refrigeration, and in Britain a summer close season was also imposed on the native fishery. Farmed oysters are sold year-round now, though winter ones are still fatter.
Oysters were cheap in nineteenth-century Britain, dredged in enormous quantities from the Thames estuary, Whitstable and the Essex flats and sold by the barrel to working households as well as grand ones. That is why a recipe for twelve people can call for six dozen of them and still cost seven shillings, and why oysters turn up here padding out soups, stuffing beef and beaten into batters rather than being served ceremonially on ice. The stocks collapsed from overfishing and disease in the later decades of the century, and by the time this compilation was circulating the oyster was on its way to becoming a luxury. The construction of the soup itself is straightforward Victorian practice: a broth, a butter-and-flour thickening simmered long enough to lose its raw taste, and the delicate ingredient added at the very end.