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To Make Oyster Sauce
326. Take the oysters, open the bodies, and remove the beards; put the former into a saucepan with the liquor and a little water; put the beards into a piece of muslin, and boil them with the oysters to extract the juice and flavour; thicken with flour and butter; and after removing the beards, add some cream, a little mace, pepper, and salt. Cockles or mussels for sauce, taking care to remove the dark spot in the body of the mussel, as it is considered poisonous, and to clean the cockles thoroughly from all particles of sand.
A Victorian white sauce built on oyster liquor, written in the compressed style of a book that assumed you already knew the proportions. The whole trick is heat control: the oysters are there for flavour, not for cooking.
- The hinge: barely cook the oystersOysters plumped and then simmered turn firm and rubbery within a couple of minutes. Warm them in their liquor just until the edges ruffle, lift them out, finish the sauce, and return them off the heat.
- Beards and bodiesThe "beard" is the frilled gill and mantle trim; the "body" is the plump muscle and belly. The muslin bag is a bouquet garni for shellfish, letting the trimmings give up flavour without leaving grit or shreds in the finished sauce.
- Quantities are not givenA workable reading for a sauce to serve four to six is about a dozen and a half oysters with their strained liquor, 1 oz butter worked with 1 oz flour, and 4-5 fl oz cream. The original leaves all of this to the cook's judgement.
- Thicken with flour and butterMost likely kneaded butter and flour, beurre manie, whisked into the simmering liquor in small pieces, though the phrase was also used loosely for flour worked into melted butter. Either way, let it bubble two or three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Strain the liquorOyster liquor can carry shell fragments and grit, so it is worth pouring it through a fine sieve or muslin before it goes into the pan; the recipe itself insists only on cleaning the cockles thoroughly of sand.
- MaceBlade mace, the lacy covering of the nutmeg, was a common seasoning in English fish sauces. A single blade infused and then removed is closer to the intent than a heavy hand with ground mace.
- The mussel "dark spot"The belief that a dark spot in the mussel is poisonous is folklore rather than fact. The real precaution is to buy mussels from a reputable supplier, discard any that stay shut after cooking, and cook them through.
- ServingThis is a sauce for plain boiled or poached white fish, principally cod, turbot and haddock, and traditionally for boiled fowl. Make it while the fish cooks and serve it hot in a boat.