Home › Recipes › Aspic of Oysters
Aspic of Oysters
Prepare the oysters as for salad by scalding them in seasoned vinegar and oyster liquor. Prepare some green aspic jelly (ravigote jelly) by boiling some green celery leaves done, draining dry, pounding, mixing with clear aspic and then straining it again. Cool the green jelly in the smallest flat dishes-it is to form foundations to lay the oysters on.
Boil some eggs hard and chop the yolks for border ornament. Now place about four oysters diagonally side by side in the smallest flat dish, and pour over enough clear white or amber jelly, highly seasoned with pepper sauce and lemon juice, to nearly cover them. When all are cold slip the shapes of green jelly from their dishes by means of a knife and place them bottom side up on the dishes they are to be served in, then the shape of oysters on that and ornament with the minced yolks or tiny leaves of heart lettuce. "Alleys of scarlet tomatoes, purple mulberries, grapes, lemons, oranges, quinces, pumpkins, 'melons; gourds of all shapes, sizes, and colors, green and pinky and yellow and violet; pearly rice from the fields about Mantua; and unground maize, like beads of clouded amber. Flowers are in profusion-roses, camellias, and autumn violets; besides mountains of mulberry leaves for silk-worm breeders, pine cones for firing, flat baskets piled high with wrinkled olives, and sacks of shining brown chestnuts. "Giving smile for smile, greeting for greeting, La Giulietta meanwhile makes her modest purchases; lettuce and cress and sweet fennel for salad; lentils and a handful of tawny fungi for soup; a little pat of fresh butter wrapped in mulberry leaves; and the proffered morsel of stracchino for Uncle Stefano's supper."--An Italian Market-place.-Lord Bracken-bury. "Another species of fennel, called finocchio by the Italians, is also used for the same purposes, and as a flavoring for soups."--Bazar. "In a corner, far away from any group of talkers, two mules were standing, well adorned with red tassels and collars. One of them carried wooden milk-vessels, the other a pair of panniers filled with herbs and salads. * * * * Nevertheless our stranger had no compunction in awaking her, but the means he chose were so gentle that it seemed to the damsel in her dream as if a little sprig of thyme had touched her lips while she was stooping to gather the herbs."--An Italian Market place.--Romola. "Would you kindly get those Soissons haricots fetched, which I see at the end of the table. * * * * I beg also your favorable notice for the small marsh beans, sometimes called English beans; when still green they are a dish for the gods."--Savarin. `It is said that we are indebted to Alexander the Great for the introduction of this bean into Europe, for while marching on his victorious route in India his eye fell upon a field of these plants. They appeared to him very inviting, and finding them good for food he highly recommended them to his countrymen." "The Romans preserved them with vinegar and garum, and they were handed round at the beginning of a feast to excite the appetites of the guests." "About Bari? Surely-a seaport on the Adriatic coast. You may see plenty of Bari trading vessels at Ancona and Venice. Our neighbor Sacchi, who understands the wholesale business as well as any man in town, gets all his oil from Bari. Being brought by sea to Venice, it comes cheaper than the oils of Florence and Lucca, which have to be brought across the Apennines. Don't you know the proverb, 'Bari for oil, Trani for figs, Otranto for pretty women?'"--Lord Brackenbury.
A garde-manger set piece: two jellies, one green and one clear, moulded separately and stacked at service. The book's text runs on into a long string of unrelated literary clippings — Whitehead padded his pages with them, and none of it belongs to the recipe.
- The hingeEverything depends on the two jellies being set firmly and separately, then assembled cold. Do not pour warm clear jelly over a green layer that has not fully set, or the colours bleed and the stacked shape collapses when unmoulded.
- Aspic in practiceA clear aspic here means a well-reduced veal or chicken stock clarified with egg white and reinforced with gelatin. Modern shortcut: 2 cups strong clarified stock to 1 packet (about 2 1/4 tsp) powdered gelatin for a jelly firm enough to unmould, more like 3 tsp if it is to be handled and turned out on a plate.
- Green (ravigote) jellyThe green comes only from blanched celery leaves pounded and infused into clear aspic, then re-strained. Blanch the leaves 30 seconds, refresh in ice water, and squeeze dry — long boiling turns the colour olive. Classical ravigote colouring also uses spinach, parsley and tarragon; a handful of spinach leaves gives a stronger green if celery alone looks weak.
- Amber vs. white jellyThe book does not say what either is; "white" jelly most likely means aspic from a pale chicken or fish stock, and "amber" a darker one, whether from browned bones or a deeper reduction. Both should be crystal clear — cloudy jelly ruins the effect, so strain through a cloth and do not stir once clarified.
- Scalding the oystersBring the oyster liquor and a splash of vinegar to a bare simmer, drop the oysters in, and lift them out as soon as the edges ruffle — a minute or two. The recipe gives no time; long cooking leaves them shrunken and rubbery in the jelly.
- "Pepper sauce"A thin vinegar-based hot sauce of the Tabasco type, not ground pepper. Season the jelly assertively while it is warm and liquid; chilled jelly tastes noticeably flatter than it did in the pan.
- "The smallest flat dishes"Shallow individual moulds — 3 to 4 oz ramekins, dariole cups or small saucers will do. To unmould, dip the base in hot water for a few seconds and run a thin knife round, rather than levering with the blade as the original suggests.
- Yield and serviceFour oysters to a mould gives one first-course portion; the quantities scale directly. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead, keep refrigerated, and serve cold — jellied stock at room temperature is a good growth medium and the shapes soften quickly on the plate.
Aspic work of this kind was the pastry cook's and garde-manger's territory in American hotels and clubs of the 1880s and 90s, when a cold buffet was judged by the clarity of its jellies and the neatness of its moulded shapes. The green jelly is borrowed from French practice: ravigote, from the verb ravigoter, to perk up or revive, names a family of sharp green herb preparations, and colouring an aspic with pounded blanched greens was a standard trick for giving a cold dish contrast without dye. Oysters were cheap and everywhere on the American table then, which is why they turn up moulded, saladed and creamed in books of every sort. The literary clippings trailing after the instructions are characteristic of Jessup Whitehead's compilations, which filled out their pages with scraps from novels, magazines and Brillat-Savarin — here an Italian market scene and a note on fennel and beans, with no bearing on the oysters at all.