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Oyster Fricassee
Milk or cream 1 egg ¼ teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley Clean oysters, heat oyster liquor to boiling-point, and strain through double thickness of cheese-cloth; add oysters to liquor and cook until plump. Remove oysters with skimmer and add enough cream to liquor to make a cupful. Melt butter, add flour, and pour on gradually hot liquid; add salt, cayenne, parsley, oysters, and egg slightly beaten. 1 pint oysters
A simple oyster cream stew thickened with a roux and finished with egg. The whole dish hangs on not overcooking the oysters.
- Cook the oysters barely at all"Cook until plump" means one to two minutes in the simmering liquor, until the edges just ruffle. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber; lift them out with a skimmer the moment they curl and hold them aside while you build the sauce.
- Straining the liquorOyster liquor carries grit and bits of shell. Bringing it to a boil and passing it through doubled cheesecloth (a coffee filter or fine chinois works as well) is worth doing properly, since the liquor is the backbone of the sauce.
- The egg must not boilThe beaten egg goes in off the heat, at the very end. Temper it with a few spoonfuls of the hot sauce first, then stir it back in; if the pan returns to a simmer the egg will scramble and the sauce will look curdled.
- Butter and flour proportionsFor the cupful of liquor and cream called for, a standard white sauce of this book's type would use about 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour. Cook them together a minute before adding the hot liquid so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- Salt with careOyster liquor is already saline and varies a great deal by oyster. Season at the end rather than measuring salt in at the start.
- Cayenne"Few grains" is a pinch, no more than an eighth of a teaspoon. It is meant as background warmth, not heat you can identify.
- YieldA pint of shucked oysters with a cup of sauce serves two generously, or four in small portions over toast points, in patty shells, or in ramekins as a first course.
- Buying oystersShucked oysters sold in a tub come with their liquor, which is what the recipe wants. If you shuck your own, catch every drop; a pint of oysters yields far less liquor than you expect.
Fricassee normally means poultry or veal cut up and stewed in a pale sauce, and by the late nineteenth century American cookbooks were applying the word freely to anything simmered and finished with cream and egg. Oysters were then cheap, abundant and eaten in enormous quantity along the Atlantic seaboard, which is why Fannie Farmer's book devotes a whole run of pages to them, from raw on the half shell through scalloped, fried, broiled, panned, curried and creamed. The egg-and-cream finish here is the classic French liaison; the same thickening logic underlies the book's oyster soups and its creamed fish. Oyster stews of this kind were standard supper and invalid cookery, quick to make and easy to eat.