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Oyster Sauce
1 pint small oysters 1 cup medium white sauce seasoned Heat the oysters in their own liquor to boiling-point. Remove them from the fire after they have boiled one-half minute, skim them, and combine with the white sauce.
A short 1920s sauce that depends almost entirely on how briefly the oysters see heat. The half-minute in the original is not an understatement.
- Medium white sauceStandard proportions of the period: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, cooked until it coats a spoon. "Seasoned" would ordinarily mean salt and pepper.
- A pint of oystersShucked oysters were sold by the pint, roughly 20-30 small ones with their liquor, about a pound. Pint tubs of shucked oysters are still sold, though smaller sizes are now common.
- Do not cook them twiceThe oysters are barely set in their own liquor before being combined with the white sauce. The original does not say to return the mixture to the fire, and reboiling it shrinks the oysters and makes them rubbery.
- Use the liquorThe original only says to skim the oysters and combine them with the sauce; adding a few spoonfuls of the hot liquor to the white sauce is a modern addition, not in the text.
- CurdlingOyster liquor is salty and close to neutral or mildly acidic. A flour-bound sauce is fairly stable, but adding liquor gradually to the warm sauce and keeping the pan below a simmer is the safer order.
- YieldAbout 3 cups, enough for four to six servings poured over poached or baked white fish, or over boiled fowl.