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Oyster Bouillon
25 oysters 1 cup water Salt and red pepper 1 pint milk 1/2 tablespoon butter Wash the oysters; chop them fine; cover with water or oyster juice and cook in a double boiler for one hour, closely covered; strain through a sieve; add the milk, separately heated, and the butter and seasoning. Serve in bouillon cups OYSTER SOUP No. 1 25 oysters and juice 1 pint milk 1 ounce butter Salt and pepper 1 hard boiled egg 1 soda cracker rolled 1/4 cup chopped celery Boil the milk and set it aside. Bring the oyster juice to a boil and remove the scum. Put the oysters over the fire with the juice and the butter; let them simmer until the edges begin to curl; add the boiled milk; bring all to a boil and add the seasoningsalt and pepper to taste. Mix the cracker and celery with the egg, finely chopped; put these into a tureen and pour the soup over them.
OYSTER SOUP No. 2 25 oysters and juice 1 pint cream stock Drain the oysters through a colander; strain the juice through a fine sieve; bring to a boil; skim; and when clear add the oysters, washing them first to remove bits of shell. Let them cook slowly until the edges begin to curl; add the cream stock and serve. 25 small clams 1 pint milk Pinch of mace 1 hard-boiled egg
Three related oyster soups run together on one leaf, plus the first line of a clam soup that the page cuts off. The bouillon is an extraction — the oysters are cooked to death on purpose and then strained out — while the two soups depend on barely cooking them at all.
- The hinge: edges just curlingIn Soups No. 1 and No. 2 the oysters are done the moment the frills contract, a minute or two in the hot liquor; past that they tighten into rubber. Note that the original then directs bringing the whole to a boil once the hot milk is in, so add the milk already heated and keep that final boil brief.
- Why the bouillon cooks an hourThe long covered spell in the double boiler is not overcooking by mistake — it is a flavour extraction, and the spent oysters are strained away. Chop them fine as directed, because the surface area is doing the work.
- 25 oystersShucked oysters were sold by count and by volume; 25 of medium size come to roughly a pint measured with their liquor, so a pint of shucked oysters in their liquor is about what the recipe wants. Drained weight varied with the grade.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh chilli. A pinch is enough in a delicate milk soup.
- "Cream stock"Not explained in the original. It most plausibly means cream, or a thin cream-based stock kept warm on the range; a pint of light cream, or cream let down with some of the strained oyster liquor, will give the body intended. This is a reconstruction, not the book's own direction.
- GritStrain the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter and rinse the oysters before they go in. Shell fragments are the usual fault with an otherwise good oyster soup.
- Soda cracker rolledA plain soda cracker, the period equivalent of a saltine, crushed to coarse crumbs; one only. It goes into the tureen with the chopped celery and hard-boiled egg and the soup is poured over, so it keeps some texture.
- Salt lastOyster liquor is already saline, so season only after the milk is in.
- YieldEach version serves four as a first course, or two as a supper dish. Bouillon cups hold about 6 oz.
Oyster soups were a staple of American soup cookery because oysters were then cheap, abundant and shipped inland in barrels and cans as soon as the railways allowed it — a pint of shucked oysters was a working household's protein, not a luxury. The distinction drawn here is a period one: a bouillon is a clear strained essence served in handled cups, closer to a restorative broth than a stew, while the soup keeps the oysters whole and enriches with milk or cream in the manner of what is now called an oyster stew. Loose-leaf cook books of this kind were sold as binders so a cook could add printed leaves and her own handwritten ones together. The Chesapeake and Gulf beds that supplied this trade were fished far harder than they can be now, and the count-per-pint pricing that made "25 oysters" a sensible unit of measure has long since gone.