Oyster Pie
40 large oysters. 2 hard-boiled eggs. Salt and pepper. Little grated nutmeg. 1/2 tablespoon chopped onion 1/2 tablespoon chopped parsley 3 tablespoons flour 4 tablespoons butter Put the oysters over the fire in their own liquor; add the other ingredients, rubbing the butter to a paste with the flour first. Stir until the butter is thoroughly melted: then pour into a deep pudding dish, the sides of which are lined with half puff-paste. Have an inverted cup in the center of the dish to support the top crust; cover with paste; fasten the edges securely and make a few slashes to allow the steam to escape. Bake in a quick oven for about a half hour. When brown on the top, cover with paper to prevent the crust from burning.
A straightforward oyster pie thickened with a butter-flour paste and baked under puff pastry. The ingredient list gives aromatics and thickening only, so the oyster quantity and seasoning are left to the cook.
- Quantity of oystersThe recipe gives no oyster quantity. The flour and butter would suit something in the region of a quart of shucked oysters with their liquor (roughly 2 lb), enough for a deep dish serving about four, but this is an inference, not the book's instruction.
- Do not cook the oysters throughThis is the hinge. "Put the oysters over the fire in their own liquor" means only until their edges begin to curl and the liquor is hot, a minute or two. They will cook again for half an hour in the oven, and oysters that were simmered first come out as erasers.
- Quick oven425-450F. That heat is what lifts the puff paste; a slow oven gives a pale, sodden lid.
- The kneaded butterRubbing 4 tablespoons butter into 3 tablespoons flour makes what is now called beurre manié. Whisk it into the hot liquor in pieces so it disperses; dropped in as one lump it will leave floury threads.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed. Oyster liquor is already saline, so season the thickened sauce at the end — salt cautiously, and add white or cayenne pepper to taste alongside the parsley and onion.
- Half puff-pasteUsually understood as a lighter version of puff, made with less butter or fewer turns than the full paste. Commercial all-butter puff pastry works; roll the bottom lining a little thinner than the lid, and chill the assembled pie for 15 minutes before it goes in.
- The inverted cupA teacup or an ovenproof egg cup set upside down in the middle holds the lid clear of the filling so it can rise and stay crisp. A ceramic pie bird does the same job. Warn anyone serving that it is in there.
- The paper coverA sheet of parchment or loose foil laid over the top once it colours, as the recipe directs. Do not seal it down or the steam will soften the crust you have just built.
Oyster pie belongs to a period when oysters were cheap protein rather than a luxury: the beds of the Chesapeake, Long Island Sound and the New England coast supplied American cities in enormous volume through the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the era treat oysters much as later ones treat canned tuna — fried, scalloped, stewed, creamed and baked under crust. The construction here, a deep dish lined and lidded with pastry over a cup that props up the roof, closely resembles English raised and covered pies; the same trick appears in beefsteak and kidney pudding recipes of the same decades.