Oyster Salad
One quart of oysters, 1 pint of celery, 1/3 teacup of mayonnaise dressing, 3 tablespoons vinegar, 1 of oil, salt, pepper, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. Let the oysters come to a boil in their own liquor. Skim well and drain; season with oil, pepper, vinegar and lemon juice. When cold, put in ice-chest for 2 hours. Scrape and wash whitest, tenderest parts of celery, and cut in very thin slices; put in a bowl with a large lump of ice, and set in ice-chest until serving time. When ready to serve, drain celery and mix with oysters, and half of dressing. Arrange in dish, pour remainder of dressing over, and garnish with white celery leaves.
A cold oyster salad of the sort that turned up at luncheons and card parties around 1900. Two things decide whether it works: how briefly the oysters meet the heat, and how cold everything is when it goes to the table.
- Barely cook the oysters"Let the oysters come to a boil" means exactly that — the moment the liquor breaks into a boil and the oyster edges ruffle, they come off the heat, one to two minutes. Held at a simmer they tighten into rubber and weep out their liquor, which is the usual way this salad goes wrong.
- A quart of oystersThis means shucked oysters in their liquor, roughly 2 lb including the liquor, perhaps 24 to 36 oysters depending on size. Tubs sold by the pint or quart are the right thing here; use the liquor for the poaching, as the recipe directs.
- Teacup measureA teacup in American books of this period is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though the measure was not standardised; on that basis 1/3 teacup of mayonnaise is about 1/4 cup. '1 of oil' most likely continues the tablespoon count from the vinegar: one tablespoon.
- Ice-chestThe refrigerator. Two hours at 40F or below is right, and the oysters should be thoroughly cold before the dressing goes on or the mayonnaise will loosen.
- The lump of ice in the celeryDirect contact with ice crisps cut celery and firms it noticeably. A bowl of ice water works the same way; drain and pat dry, since carried-over water thins the dressing.
- Mayonnaise dressingThe book assumes a made-from-scratch mayonnaise built on raw yolk. Jarred mayonnaise is pasteurized and stands in without adjustment; if you make your own, use pasteurized eggs, as the salad is never heated again.
- Balance the acidThree tablespoons vinegar plus a tablespoon of lemon on a quart of oysters is sharp by current taste. Season the drained oysters with half, taste cold, and add the rest if wanted — cold food reads less acidic than warm.
- YieldServes four to six as a luncheon course, on lettuce or in shells. Assemble no more than fifteen minutes before serving; the celery softens and the oysters leach liquid into the dressing.
Oyster salad belongs to the decades when oysters were cheap, abundant and eaten in quantity across the American East and Midwest — barreled and shipped inland by rail, sold by the quart from shops that dealt in nothing else. Household compilations like this one give oysters in every form: scalloped, fried, stewed, in patties, and cold in salads dressed with the newly fashionable mayonnaise, which spread through American home cooking in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The insistence on the whitest, tenderest inner celery is a period marker of its own: celery was a prized winter luxury, often set out in cut-glass vases at table, and the pale blanched heart was the part worth serving to company. The ice-chest instructions date the recipe as firmly as anything in it — a household with a regular ice delivery, and cold food as a form of display.