Sandwiches, Oyster
INGREDIENTS for savoury for 6 persons.-6 large oysters, thin brown bread - and -butter, cayenne, lemon-juice. AVERAGE COST, 10d. to 1s.
Having opened the oysters, put them in a mortar, and pound them with lemonjuice and cayenne sufficient for flavouring. Spread the oysters upon half the bread-andbutter, lay over the other slices, and, after cutting away the crust, cut into neat sandwiches, which arrange upon a silver dish or plate.
SEASONABLE from September to March.
Note. These are useful for hors d'œuvres, and should be served at the commencement of dinner, before the soup.
A Victorian savoury reduced to its essentials: raw oysters, sharpened with lemon and cayenne, between thin brown bread and butter. The whole thing depends on the oysters, so buy them live and shuck them yourself.
- QuantitySix oysters between six people is a Victorian hors d'oeuvre portion — barely a teaspoon of oyster each. For a modern appetiser allow two to three oysters per person and increase the bread accordingly.
- Pound, or chopA mortar reduces the oysters to a coarse paste that spreads. A few pulses in a small food processor does the same, but stop short of a purée; a little texture is what distinguishes this from fish paste.
- Raw shellfishThe oysters are never cooked. Use oysters from a reputable supplier, shuck them the same day, and keep the finished paste cold. Anyone pregnant, immunocompromised, or with liver disease should avoid raw oysters entirely because of Vibrio risk.
- Bread and butter"Thin brown bread-and-butter" suggests a close-textured wholemeal loaf sliced as thin as it will hold; buttering the loaf before cutting each slice is the usual Victorian method. Softened butter, generously applied, also helps stop the oyster liquor soaking through.
- Season by taste, not measureOysters vary enormously in salinity. Add lemon juice and cayenne a little at a time; the finished paste should be sharp and warm at the back of the throat but still recognisably oyster.
- Assemble at the last momentMade more than half an hour ahead, the sandwiches weep and the bread turns grey. Cut the crusts and slice into fingers or triangles immediately before serving.
- Season and cost"September to March" falls within the old R-months rule (September to April) for native oysters, which spawn in summer. Farmed rock oysters are sold year round. The 10d. to 1s. average cost is usually taken to reflect a period when oysters were cheaper relative to other foods than they are today.
- ServingBeeton places these before the soup; today they sit comfortably with drinks beforehand.
Oysters are often said to have been more widely eaten in mid-Victorian Britain than they are today — the native beds of the Thames Estuary, Essex and Whitstable supplied London in enormous volume, though the cost given here was not trivial money in the 1860s. Overfishing, disease and pollution collapsed the native fishery in the decades after Beeton, which is why the same dish reads as extravagant now. The recipe belongs to the class of small savoury sandwiches that filled out a Victorian menu: pounded meat, fish or shellfish bound with seasoning and spread between thin buttered bread, of a kind with the potted-shrimp and anchovy sandwiches that persisted into the twentieth century. The instruction to serve them before the soup is idiosyncratic; the standard Victorian place for a savoury was at the end of dinner, after the sweet, and Beeton's note reads as a suggestion for the newer French fashion of hors d'oeuvres.