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Fricassee of Oysters
INGREDIENTS.
1 quart of oysters. 4 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1/2 a teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
Yolks of 2 eggs.
1 tablespoonful of flour.
Pepper, salt, cayenne.
The book gives quantities but leaves the method to the cook's judgment, as chafing-dish books often did. What follows fills in the working details.
- The hinge: yolks off the heatEgg yolks are the thickener here, and they will scramble if the pan is over direct flame when they go in. Slake them with a little of the hot liquid, stir them in with the blazer off the heat or set over the hot-water pan, and take the sauce only to the point where it coats a spoon.
- Oysters cook in two minutesPoach them in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, one to two minutes, then lift them out while you finish the sauce and return them at the end.
- A quart of oystersThat means a quart of shucked oysters with their liquor, i.e. 2 pints; the number of oysters that makes up varies with their size. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve to catch shell grit and use it as the liquid for the sauce.
- Chafing dish, blazer and hot-water panThe blazer is the shallow upper pan used over the flame directly; the water pan beneath turns it into a double boiler. Butter, flour and oysters go in the blazer over flame, the egg-yolk finish over water. A heavy skillet and a bowl set over simmering water do the same work.
- Butter and flour proportionsFour tablespoons butter to one of flour is far more butter than a standard roux needs; the extra is enrichment, not thickening. Cook the flour in a portion of the butter for a minute, build the sauce with the strained oyster liquor, and stir the remaining butter in at the finish.
- Cayenne and saltSalt last. Oyster liquor is already saline and reduces further as the sauce thickens. Cayenne belongs in a pinch, enough to sharpen rather than announce itself.
- Yield and servingEnough for about four as a supper dish. Chafing-dish fricassees of this kind were often spooned over buttered toast points, into puff-paste shells, or onto crackers, and they do not hold: serve as soon as the yolks have thickened.
"Fricassee" comes into English from French cookery, where it means meat or fish cut up, cooked gently in a little liquid, and served in a sauce of that liquid thickened with egg yolks and butter -- a white stew rather than a browned one, which is what this list of ingredients builds. An oyster fricassee of this sort belongs to the chafing-dish vogue of the turn of the century: oysters were plentiful and cheap, sold shucked by the quart, and the chafing dish had become fashionable for late suppers and after-theater parties, where the host cooked at the table. The recipes written for it are accordingly short, rich, quick, and built on ingredients that need almost no cooking -- oysters, eggs, butter, cream, cheese, lobster. The bare ingredient list, with no method, assumes a reader who already knows how a fricassee behaves.