Creamed Oysters
1 pint oysters. 3/4 cup milk. 1½ tablespoons flour 1 tablespoon butter Salt and pepper Dash of celery salt Heat the oysters in their own liquor, removing the scum that rises. Melt the butter in a separate pan; stir in the flour; add the milk gradually, stirring constantly to prevent lumps. Pour the oysters into the cream sauce thus made and just before serving add the seasoning. Serve in patty shells or on buttered toast.
A plain white sauce with oysters folded in at the last moment. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete — no quantity of oysters or milk is given — so the proportions have to be read out of the method.
- The hinge: barely cook the oystersHeat them in their liquor only until the edges ruffle and curl, about one to two minutes, then take them off the heat. Held any longer they tighten and turn rubbery, and the point of the dish is lost.
- Missing milk quantityThe list gives flour and butter but no milk. A tablespoon of butter and 1½ tablespoons of flour will carry about 1 cup of milk for a pouring sauce; the original leaves this to the cook's judgement and no exact figure can be recovered.
- How many oystersAlso unstated. Reckon on a pint of shucked oysters with their liquor for four servings over toast, or a scant pint for six patty shells.
- The scumWhat rises as the liquor heats is coagulated protein and bits of shell grit. Skimming it is not fussiness — it keeps the finished sauce clean-tasting and free of sand.
- Use the liquorOnce skimmed, the oyster liquor is the best flavour in the dish. Strain it and let some of it replace part of the milk, or the sauce will taste of nothing but flour.
- Celery saltStill sold, and still the period seasoning for oysters and shellfish. It carries salt with it, so season the sauce at the end as instructed rather than salting the milk early.
- Patty shellsThese were baked puff-paste cases, made at home or bought from a baker. Frozen puff pastry vol-au-vent cases, or a square of good toast, do the same job.
- ServingAssemble at the table. Oysters continue cooking in hot sauce, and a dish that stands in a warm oven will be tough by the time it reaches a plate.
Creamed oysters belong to a long American run of oyster cookery that peaked in the late nineteenth century, when Atlantic and Gulf beds were still yielding oysters in volumes that made them cheap urban food rather than a luxury — sold by the barrel, hawked from carts, and worked into stews, fries, patties and scallops. A cookbook of this period will often carry a whole cluster of them in the fish chapter, and this is among the mildest of the family: a white sauce, a skim, and a short heating. The patty shell serving belongs to the era's lunch and supper table, where a rich creamed filling in pastry was one way to make a small quantity of shellfish stretch to a course.