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Oyster Soup
249. Take two quarts of fish stock, as directed in par. 222; beat the yolks of ten hard-boiled eggs and the solid part of two quarts of oysters in a mortar, and add this to the stock. Simmer it all for half an hour; then strain it off, and put it and the oysters (cleared of the beards, and nicely washed) into the soup. Simmer five minutes; have ready the yolks of six raw eggs, well beaten, and add them to the soup. Stir it all well one way on the side of the fire till it is thick and smooth, but do not let it boil. Serve altogether. 250. OYSTER SOUP WITH CREAM-EXCELLENT FOR SUPPER. -Strain the liquor from the oysters, and rinse them well in the liquor. Then take a portion of the pale veal stock of which the soup is to be made, and simmer the beards in it for nearly half an hour. Flavour the stock with mace and pepper, and add to it that portion in which the beards have been simmered, first straining the latter. Then put the oysters and their liquor into a saucepan, and simmer them till the oysters are plumped up, after which take out the oysters, and add the liquor to the stock. Thicken with arrow-root (mixed with a little cold milk), or flour and butter, and add, just before serving, from three-
A Victorian egg-thickened oyster soup, closer to a velvety fish velouté than to the milky American oyster stew. The whole dish stands or falls on the liaison at the end.
- Never let it boilOnce the six raw yolks go in, the soup must be held below a simmer — around 170-180F. A boil will scramble the yolks and leave grainy threads that no amount of stirring will smooth out. Pulling the pan half off the heat, as the original directs, is exactly right.
- Oyster timingFive minutes is longer than modern practice wants. Shucked oysters are done in one to two minutes, as soon as the edges ruffle; beyond that they tighten and turn rubbery. Add them at the last moment and let residual heat finish them.
- Quarts of oystersA quart here means shucked oysters with their liquor, roughly 2 lb or 25-40 oysters depending on size. Two quarts is a substantial outlay; half quantities work fine if you scale the stock and eggs to match.
- The beardsThe "beard" is the dark frilled mantle and gill edge. Victorian cooks trimmed it off as tough, then simmered it for flavour — a sound move, since it carries a lot of the oyster's savour. Modern shucked oysters are usually sold whole and untrimmed.
- Fish stockParagraph 222 is the book's own fish stock; its composition is not given on this page. A light unsalted fish fumet, kept to 20-30 minutes so it stays clean-tasting, substitutes directly. Two quarts serves eight to ten as a first course.
- Hard-boiled yolks as thickenerPounding ten cooked yolks with oyster meat in a mortar is a pre-blender purée; a food processor does it in seconds. The mixture is simmered and strained before it goes into the soup, so only what passes the sieve contributes body; the raw yolks at the end supply the gloss.
- Arrowroot in the second versionArrowroot slaked in cold milk thickens almost instantly and clears as it cooks, but it thins if held hot or reboiled. A butter-and-flour roux, the alternative given, is more forgiving if the soup has to wait.
- MaceGround mace, the outer coat of nutmeg, was the standard Victorian seasoning for oysters and pale veal stock. It is milder and more floral than nutmeg; a scant quarter-teaspoon per quart is plenty.
Oysters were cheap food in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, dredged in quantity from the Thames estuary and Essex and sold by the barrel, which is why a recipe can call for two quarts of them without apology. Their collapse came later in the century through over-dredging, pollution and disease, and by 1900 oyster soup had turned from an everyday supper into a luxury. The two versions here show the period's two schools: the first thickens with pounded hard-boiled yolks and a raw-yolk liaison, a technique inherited from older English "white" soups and closely related to French liaison à l'œuf; the second builds on pale veal stock with cream and arrowroot, in the newer and less laborious manner. The instruction to stir "one way" is traditional kitchen lore rather than chemistry, though it does encourage the slow, even stirring that keeps an egg liaison from breaking.