Oyster Stew
1 pint oysters and juice 1 pint hot milk or cream Salt and red pepper 1 ounce butter Put the oysters over the fire in their own liquor; the moment they come to a boil, skim carefully and add the hot milk or cream. Skim again; remove from the fire and add the butter and seasoning.
A two-minute stew that depends almost entirely on restraint at the stove. Everything here happens in the time it takes the oyster liquor to reach a boil.
- Pull them the instant they curlThe recipe says "the moment they come to a boil" and means it. Oysters are done when the edges ruffle and the liquor turns slightly cloudy, roughly 1-2 minutes; held longer they shrink and turn rubbery.
- A pint of oystersThat is the old shucked-oyster measure sold in liquor, about 16 fl oz, or somewhere in the range of a dozen to twenty medium oysters plus their juice, depending on size. A supermarket tub of shucked oysters is often 8 or 16 oz and works directly.
- Do not boil the milk inHeat the milk or cream separately and add it hot off its own heat. Boiling dairy with salty, faintly acidic oyster liquor can curdle it, and the recipe's structure — hot milk added to hot oysters, then straight off the fire — keeps that from happening.
- SkimmingOyster liquor throws a grey foam and bits of shell grit. Skim it rather than stir it back in; alternatively strain the liquor through a fine sieve before heating.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not a fresh chili. A pinch is enough — it should warm the finish, not announce itself.
- Butter last, off the heatOne ounce is 2 tablespoons. Adding it away from the fire lets it emulsify into the liquid instead of separating into slicks.
- YieldTwo generous servings as a supper dish, four as a first course. Serve at once in warmed bowls; it does not hold or reheat.
Oyster stew of this kind — no roux, no vegetables, barely a recipe — was widely made in America from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth, when oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans. Community cookbooks of the period print many near-identical versions, and the milk-and-butter style is generally traced to the Atlantic coast and the oyster cellars of cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Its persistence as a Christmas Eve dish in parts of the Midwest and among American Catholic families is often attributed to meatless fast days, when a canned or barreled shellfish could stand in for meat far from any coast. It appears in a loose-leaf instructional cook book like Mrs. Fryer's in characteristically brief form.