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Oyster Cocktail III
Allow seven Blue Point oysters to each person, and season with three-fourth tablespoon lemon juice, one-half tablespoon tomato catsup, one-half teaspoon finely chopped shallot, three drops Tabasco sauce, few gratings horseradish root, and salt to taste. Chill thoroughly and serve in cocktail glasses. Sprinkle with finely chopped celery and garnish with small pieces of red and green pepper.
The quantities here are per person, not per batch — multiply everything, including the drops of Tabasco, by the number of guests. Beyond that, the only real work is shucking and keeping everything very cold.
- Scale it correctlySeven oysters and the full list of seasonings constitute one serving. For six people you need 42 oysters and roughly 4 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, 3 tablespoons catsup, 1 tablespoon minced shallot, and 18 drops of Tabasco.
- Blue PointsBlue Point once meant oysters from the beds off Blue Point, Long Island, and by the late nineteenth century the name had loosened into a size and style designation for a small, mild Atlantic oyster. Any small cupped Eastern oyster — Wellfleet, Chincoteague, Malpeque — works; avoid large ones, which are unpleasant to eat whole from a glass.
- Catsup then and nowTomato catsup of this period was often thinner, sharper and less sweet than modern ketchup. If you use supermarket ketchup, cut it back slightly and add lemon juice to compensate, or the cocktail may taste candied.
- Horseradish root"Few gratings" means fresh root grated on a fine rasp, which is far more volatile and less sour than jarred prepared horseradish. If substituting the jarred kind, drain it and use about a quarter teaspoon per serving.
- Sourcing and temperatureThese oysters are served raw. Buy from a merchant who can show you tags, keep them at refrigerator temperature cup-side down, shuck no more than an hour ahead, and discard any that do not close or that smell of anything but seawater. Anyone pregnant, immunocompromised, or with liver disease should not eat raw oysters at all.
- Mix the sauce separatelyWhisk the lemon juice, catsup, shallot, Tabasco, horseradish and salt together and chill it, then combine with the drained oysters just before serving. Oysters sitting in acid firm up and lose their texture.
- The glassA "cocktail glass" here is likely the small stemmed sherbet or champagne coupe of the era rather than a modern martini glass. Setting it in a larger bowl of crushed ice keeps it cold.
- The red and green pepperThis most likely means sweet bell or pimiento peppers cut into small pieces for color, not chilies. Add both garnishes at the last moment so the celery stays crisp.
The oyster cocktail belongs to the brief American moment when oysters were cheap, ubiquitous and served at every stage of a formal dinner; this book gives several numbered versions. The name borrowed the fashionable bar term: a small, cold, sharply seasoned thing served in a stemmed glass before the meal proper, alongside the older custom of oysters on the half shell. The seasonings amount to an early cocktail sauce, and the combination of tomato catsup, horseradish, lemon and Tabasco — the last a Louisiana product dating from 1868 — is close to the mixture still sold in bottles today. Blue Points were a standard measure of a good small oyster in the Northeast; the Long Island beds later declined under overharvesting, pollution and disease, and the name survived mostly as a market grade.