Oysters, Stewed
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.-3 dozen oysters, 1 oz. of butter, flour, pint of cream; cayenne and salt to taste; 1 blade of pounded mace.
Scald the oysters in their own liquor, take them out, beard them, and strain the liquor; put the butter into a stewpan, dredge in sufficient flour to dry it up, add the oyster-liquor and mace, and stir it over a sharp fire with a wooden spoon; when it comes to a boil, add the cream, oysters and seasoning. Let all simmer for 1 or 2 minutes, but not longer, or the oysters would harden. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with croûtons, or toasted sippets of bread. A small piece of lemonpeel boiled with the oyster-liquor, and taken out before the cream is added, will be found an improvement.
TIME.-Altogether 15 minutes.
SEASONABLE from September to April, "Pig, pudding and soup, the electrified group, With the flagon, pop under the sofa in haste." -INGOLDSBY. PANADA.
A plain Victorian oyster stew thickened with a butter-and-flour roux slackened with the oysters' own liquor. The whole thing hinges on keeping the oysters out of the heat until the last possible moment.
- Do not overcook the oystersShucked oysters need only to plump and curl at the edges, roughly one to two minutes in barely simmering liquid. The stated 15 minutes is the total working time for the dish, not the cooking time for the shellfish.
- Scalding and bearding"Scald in their own liquor" means bringing the oysters and their strained juices just to the point of steaming, not boiling. Bearding is trimming off the dark frilly gill fringe; it is edible, and many modern cooks leave it on.
- Quantity of oystersThree dozen shucked oysters is roughly 1 to 1.5 lb of meat plus their liquor; the recipe gives it as a dish for four or five. Buy them already shucked with the liquor reserved if you would rather not open three dozen shells.
- The cream measureThe cream quantity appears to have lost its fraction in this printing. Half a pint (10 fl oz UK, about 1 1/4 US cups) balances the oyster liquor from three dozen oysters; the full pint as printed gives a much milder, milkier stew.
- MaceA blade of mace is the whole dried aril of the nutmeg, sold in flat pieces. A pounded blade is roughly a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace; add it with the liquor so its perfume infuses, and use ground nutmeg sparingly if mace is unavailable.
- "A sharp fire"Brisk heat, enough to bring the thickened liquor to a boil quickly. Once the cream and oysters go in, drop to the lowest simmer; a rolling boil will both toughen the oysters and risk splitting the sauce.
- Sippets and croutonsSippets are small triangles or fingers of bread, toasted or fried in butter. Cut them from a firm white loaf and add them at the table so they do not go soft.
- Salt at the endOyster liquor is already saline and varies considerably between oysters. Season only after the cream has gone in and you have tasted.
Oysters were cheap protein in nineteenth-century Britain, dredged in enormous quantities from the Thames estuary, Essex and Whitstable beds and sold by street hawkers as well as fishmongers. The "seasonable from September to April" note reflects the old rule about months with an R in them, which had a practical basis: oysters spawn in warm weather, when the flesh turns soft and milky, and before refrigeration summer transport was risky. By the end of the century over-dredging and pollution had pushed prices up sharply, and the oyster shifted from a working-class staple to a luxury, so a recipe like this one, casually calling for three dozen, reads very differently now than when it was written.