Oyster Soup
1 Dozen Oysters 1 Rounded Teaspoon Butter 1 Cup Milk 1/2 Teaspoon Cornstarch Salt to Taste Drain the oysters and chop very fine.
Put back in the liquor and let them boil up three times, skimming each time.
When done, strain, and to the liquor add the milk, in which the cornstarch has been cooked. Just before serving add the butter. Clam soup may be made in the same way.
A minimal oyster stew that leans entirely on the liquor for flavour. It comes together in under ten minutes, and the only real risk is overcooking the shellfish.
- YieldA dozen oysters and one cup of milk makes two small cups, or one generous bowl. For four people as a first course, double everything; the method scales without adjustment.
- Buying the oystersThe recipe assumes you are shucking your own or buying them freshly opened in their liquor. A half-pint container of shucked oysters with its juice is roughly a dozen medium ones. Do not rinse them, the liquor is the stock.
- "Boil up three times"This means bringing to a boil, pulling off the heat as the foam rises, skimming, and repeating. It is a clarifying step for the liquor, not a cooking time. Chopped oysters are done in well under a minute; the whole sequence should take two or three minutes at most.
- StrainingThe instruction discards the chopped oyster meat and keeps only the clarified liquor, which is why this reads as a thin soup rather than a stew. If you would rather not lose the meat, return the chopped oysters to the pot after straining out the grit and scum through a fine sieve or a doubled square of muslin.
- The cornstarchHalf a teaspoon in a cup of milk gives barely more than body. The recipe says only that the cornstarch is cooked in the milk; slake it in a spoonful of cold milk first, then whisk into the rest and cook two or three minutes until it loses its raw starch taste, before combining with the hot liquor.
- Keep it below a boilOnce the milk goes in, hold the pan at a bare steam. Boiled milk against salty oyster liquor curdles readily.
- Butter lastA rounded teaspoon is roughly 7 g, a small knob. Swirling it in off the heat is what gives the soup its gloss; melting it in earlier at a simmer will not do the same thing.
- SeasoningSalt to taste means very little salt. Oyster liquor is seawater. Taste after the milk goes in, and consider white pepper and a few drops of lemon instead.
- ClamsThe substitution works, but clam liquor is saltier and sandier. Let it settle and pour off the clear liquid, leaving the last spoonful behind.
Oyster soups and stews fill the soup chapter of a great many American cookbooks from the 1870s through the 1920s, and for good reason: shucked oysters were among the cheapest protein available in eastern and Gulf cities, shipped inland packed in ice and sold by the quart from barrels. A cookbook of this sort would have treated the dish as basic competence rather than a delicacy, which is why the recipe runs to four ingredients and no timings worth the name. The version here belongs to the thin, milk-based side of the tradition, rather than to the cream-heavy stews often associated with the period; the parting note that clams may be treated the same way is typical of the period's habit of getting two recipes out of one set of instructions.