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Garnish
with parsley.
Mushrooms à l'Algonquin Brush large selected mushrooms. Remove stems, peel caps, and sauté caps in butter. Place in a small buttered shallow pan, cap side being up; place on each a large oyster, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place on each a bit of butter. Cook in a hot oven until oysters are plump. Serve with Brown or Béchamel Sauce.
A short savoury from the vegetable chapter, printed here with the tail of the preceding entry attached. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the oysters.
- The oyster is the timer"Until oysters are plump" means the edges have just begun to ruffle and curl, which in a hot oven happens quickly, in a matter of minutes. Held longer they tighten and turn rubbery, and the liquor they throw floods the pan.
- A hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures in degrees; "hot" is conventionally read today as somewhere around 425-450F. The heat matters: it sets the oyster fast rather than stewing it in its own juices.
- Peeling the capsCultivated white and cremini mushrooms sold today have thin, clean skins and need only a wipe or a quick brush. The instruction reflects the coarser, dirtier field and hothouse mushrooms of the period.
- Mushroom size"Large selected" means caps broad enough to seat an oyster. Large stuffing mushrooms or portobello caps trimmed of gills both work; the gills of a mature portobello will blacken the sauce.
- Sauté first, then bakeThe preliminary sauté drives off water so the caps do not weep in the oven. Cook them cut side down until they release liquid and it evaporates, then turn.
- OystersShucked oysters sold in tubs are the practical choice; drain them well and pat dry, or the pan will fill with liquor. Reserve that liquor to loosen the sauce.
- The saucesBoth are elsewhere in the book. Brown Sauce is a butter-and-flour roux cooked to a nut colour with brown stock; Béchamel in this cookbook is a white roux with equal parts white stock and scalded milk, not the all-milk version common now.
- YieldCount two to three mushrooms per person as a first course, one or two as a garnish for beef or as a savoury on toast.
Naming a dish "à l'Algonquin" was a piece of hotel French, of the sort American kitchens produced in quantity around 1900 — a domestic place-name fitted into the grammar of the classical menu. The pairing itself is older than the name: oysters were cheap, abundant and eaten at every level of the East Coast table through the nineteenth century, and they turn up in Farmer's book baked, fried, creamed, and used as a stuffing or, as here, a topping. Mushrooms in the period were still something of a luxury item, mostly hothouse-grown, which is why the recipe specifies "large selected" ones and puts the dish among the garnishes and made vegetable dishes rather than the plain boiled ones.