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Oysters à la Ballard
Arrange oysters on the half shell in a dripping-pan, and bake in a hot oven until edges curl. Allow six to each serve, pouring over the following sauce:
Mix three-fourths tablespoon melted butter, three-fourths teaspoon each lemon juice and Sauterne, few drops Tabasco, one-fourth teaspoon finely chopped parsley, and salt and paprika to taste. Before putting ingredients in bowl, rub inside of bowl with a clove of garlic.
A single-serving butter sauce spooned over six baked oysters. The instructions are terse in the way Fannie Farmer's shellfish chapter tends to be, and the quantities need reading carefully before you scale up.
- The sauce is per personThe sauce is probably per person -- Three-fourths tablespoon of butter and three-fourths teaspoon each of lemon and wine is barely enough to gloss six oysters, so the quantities read as a single serving. If you take it that way, multiply the whole sauce by the number of servings; for four people that is about 3 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon each lemon juice and Sauterne.
- A hot ovenSomewhere in the 400-450F range; the book gives no number. The point is to set the oysters fast so they plump and the edges ruffle before the liquor boils away.
- Watch the edges, not the clockOysters on the half shell in a 450F oven are done in roughly 5 to 8 minutes depending on size. The moment the frills curl and the flesh firms, take them out; another two minutes turns them tight and rubbery.
- Dripping-panA shallow rimmed roasting pan or a half sheet pan. Spread it with a half-inch bed of rock salt or crumpled foil so the shells sit level and none of the liquor spills.
- SauterneSpelled without the final s, this may well mean the generic American commercial white of the period rather than the sweet Bordeaux Sauternes, though the book does not say. A crisp dry white — Muscadet, Sauvignon Blanc, dry vermouth at a pinch — suits the dish.
- The garlic rubRubbing a cut clove around the bowl and using no garlic otherwise is deliberate. It scents the butter without putting anything raw and pungent on top of the oyster, which is the whole balance of the dish.
- Melted butterMelt it gently and mix the sauce warm, off the heat. If the butter cools and seizes with the lemon juice you will spoon fat and acid separately onto the shells.
- Buying and shuckingSix oysters per person as written makes a first course. Ask for them shucked on the half shell if you can, keep them cold and level until they go in the oven, and discard any that were open and did not close before shucking.
This appears in the shellfish chapter of Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, a section that reflects how central oysters were to New England eating around 1900 — cheap, abundant, sold by the barrel, and served at every level from street stall to hotel dining room. Dishes named à la somebody were the fashion of the era's restaurant cooking, and Farmer collected a number of them; the Ballard behind this one is not identified in the book, and such names might attach to a patron, a chef, a hotel or a place. What marks it as of its moment is the Tabasco and paprika: by the 1890s Louisiana pepper sauce had reached northern kitchens, and it appears here alongside a wine-and-lemon butter.