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Appetizers (PPETIZERS which are served)
PPETIZERS, which are served at the beginning of a meal, are invitations to the feast, as it were, because their piquant flavors or high seasonings stimulate digestion to wait on appetite. Native oysters and clams on the half-shell, or imported caviar (the salted roe of sturgeon), or anchovies (tiny fish) served as canapés, constitute this course at formal dinners; but for other meals the fruit cocktail forms a pleasing introduction, especially at luncheons. This dainty appetizer, served in its appropriate glass, set on a linen or paper doily on a plate, is not only very palatable, but may form part of the table decorative scheme. 12 oysters OYSTER COCKTAIL No. 1 1 teaspoon grated horseradish 1 teaspoon tomato catsup 1 saltspoon salt Dash of red pepper 1 teaspoon tabasco 2 tablespoons lemon juice Put three oysters in each glass. Mix the horseradish and sea sonings and pour the sauce over the oysters. 12 oysters OYSTER COCKTAIL No. 2 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon tomato catsup 1/2 saltspoon paprika 1 saltspoon salt 5 drops tabasco 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce Put three oysters in each glass. Make a sauce of the other ingredients and pour over the oysters.
Two cocktail sauces for raw oysters, plus a short essay on the appetizer course. The measurements are period shorthand and one of them is almost certainly a misprint.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. Both recipes are seasoned for 12 oysters, so a saltspoon of salt is generous once catsup and Worcestershire are already salty; add it last, after tasting.
- The tabasco in No. 1A full teaspoon of Tabasco over 12 oysters is far hotter than the five drops specified in No. 2, and hotter than the recipe's own "dash of red pepper" suggests. Treat it as dashes rather than a teaspoon and adjust upward if you want the heat.
- YieldThree oysters per glass, four glasses.
- Cold is the whole pointCold helps -- The recipe says nothing about temperature, but mix the sauce ahead and chill it, and set the cocktail glasses in crushed ice. Warm sauce on raw oysters dulls the liquor.
- OystersBuy shellstock or shucked oysters from a dealer with tags, keep them at refrigerator temperature, and shuck them the same hour you serve. Raw oysters carry a genuine Vibrio risk and are not appropriate for pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised guests; that is a matter of who is at the table, not of the recipe.
- Catsup has changedCommercial ketchup today is generally sweeter and thicker than the bottled catsup of the period. Use a spare hand, or substitute a plain tomato purée with a little vinegar if the sauce tastes like dessert.
- Horseradish"Grated horseradish" here means fresh root or the plain bottled grate in vinegar, not the creamed sauce. Prepared horseradish loses its bite within weeks of opening, so use a fresh jar.
- ServingThe book's staging still works: glass on a doily on a plate.
Oyster cocktails belong to the decades when American oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland on ice, and when the "cocktail" idea had migrated from the bar to the table — the oyster or clam cocktail, and later the fruit cocktail that the author recommends for luncheons. The sauce is essentially the same red mixture that became bottled cocktail sauce: catsup, horseradish, lemon, and two branded condiments that had become fixtures in American kitchens by then, Tabasco and Worcestershire. The headnote's reasoning is worth noting as period science: appetizers were understood to "stimulate digestion to wait on appetite," an echo of nineteenth-century ideas about gastric juices being called forth by piquant flavors. The parenthetical glosses on caviar and anchovies also tell you something about the intended reader — a middle-class household aspiring to formal dinners without necessarily having eaten at one.