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Pepper (Clean oysters parboil)
Clean oysters, parboil, and drain. Melt butter, add flour, and stir until well browned. Pour on gradually, while stirring constantly, oyster liquor and stock. Add seasonings and oysters. Serve on toast, in timbale cases, patty shells, or vol-au-vents. 1 pint oysters 2 tablespoons butter
A brown-sauce oyster ragout of the sort Fannie Farmer's book offers a dozen variations on, meant to be spooned into something crisp. The whole dish takes about ten minutes once the oysters are shucked.
- Do not overcook the oysters"Parboil" here means only until the edges ruffle and the oysters plump, roughly one to two minutes in their own liquor. They are added back to the finished sauce at the end and want no further cooking; heat them through and serve.
- Save the liquorDrain the parboiled oysters over a bowl. That liquor is the backbone of the sauce and should be strained through a fine sieve or a doubled cloth to catch shell grit before it goes into the roux.
- Brown the roux properlyStirring butter and flour "until well browned" means cooking past blond to a nut colour, several minutes over moderate heat. Browned flour thickens less than pale flour, so the sauce will be looser than a white sauce made with the same proportions.
- ProportionsThe printed ingredient list is incomplete. For a pint of oysters and 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and about a cup of combined oyster liquor and stock give a sauce that coats. Add the liquid a little at a time off the boil to keep it smooth.
- StockThe recipe does not say which stock. A light veal or chicken stock suits it; unsalted chicken stock works. Avoid anything heavily seasoned, since oyster liquor is already salty.
- SeasoningsThe recipe says only "seasonings"; salt and pepper are the obvious reading, and a few drops of lemon juice would not be out of place. Season at the end, after the liquor has gone into the sauce, since the liquor is already salty.
- Serving vesselsTimbale cases were deep-fried batter cups, vol-au-vents tall puff-pastry shells. Frozen puff-pastry shells or good toast do the same job.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A pint of shucked oysters will stretch to roughly three or four first-course servings, or two as a main.
Creamed and sauced oysters filled a whole chapter of American cookbooks around 1900, when oysters were still cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans. Cookbooks of the period often treat them as an everyday protein rather than a luxury, and the sequence here — parboil, build a sauce on the liquor, return the oysters — is generally taken to be the standard nineteenth-century method for keeping shellfish tender in a hot sauce. Serving the result in a pastry case reflects the era's fondness for French service: vol-au-vent and timbale cases let a cook turn an inexpensive ingredient into a course fit for company.