Chapter V-Fish
AW oysters are served either on the half shell packed in crushed ice, on oyster plates, or in a block of ice. Allow to each person five or six oysters and one-fourth of a lemon and also pass with them thin slices of delicately buttered brown or graham bread. OYSTER COCKTAIL, No. I-Oyster cocktails are served in ice shells made for this purpose or in cases made from green pepper shells, in halves of grapefruit, or in large claret glasses. Put five small oysters into each glass. For twelve cocktails allow even teaspoons each of prepared horseradish, tomato catsup and vinegar, ten teaspoons of lemon juice and one of tabasco sauce. Thoroughly mix this dressing and put an equal quantity into each glass. Both oysters and dressing should be very cold. OYSTER COCKTAIL, No. 2-Where fresh oysters are obtainable, they are always served on the half shell, on a plate of crushed ice, around a glass placed in the center of the dish holding the cocktail mixture.
Three related service notes rather than a cooked dish: raw oysters on ice, and two ways of presenting an oyster cocktail. Everything depends on sourcing and temperature, since nothing is cooked.
- The dressing quantity is garbledThe text reads "allow even teaspoons each of prepared horseradish, tomato catsup and vinegar"; a number appears to have dropped out in printing, and it cannot be recovered from the page. Mix a small batch to taste rather than guessing: for twelve cocktails one workable starting point is about 2 tablespoons each catsup and horseradish and 1 tablespoon vinegar, with the 10 teaspoons lemon juice and the single teaspoon of Tabasco as given.
- YieldFive small oysters per cocktail glass, twelve glasses — roughly five dozen small oysters, or about three 8 oz containers of shucked oysters. The half-shell service earlier in the passage counts on five or six per person.
- Claret glassesA period claret glass held about 5 to 6 oz, smaller than a modern wine glass. A coupe, a small tumbler or a stemmed dessert glass gives the same proportion of oysters to dressing.
- Ice shellsThe moulded "ice shells" sold for this purpose are long gone. A shallow bowl set inside a larger bowl of crushed ice does the same work, and the grapefruit half and pepper shell suggestions still hold up.
- Sourcing and safetyRaw oysters carry a real risk of Vibrio and norovirus. Buy from a dealer who can show harvest tags, keep them at refrigerator temperature and shuck to order rather than in advance. Anyone pregnant, immunocompromised, or with liver disease should not eat them raw at all — no amount of lemon or hot sauce affects bacteria.
- Shucking, not soakingShucked oysters should be served in their own liquor, not rinsed. Washing away the liquor is the commonest way this service loses its point.
- Temperature"Both oysters and dressing should be very cold" is the hinge of the recipe. Chill the glasses and the dressing separately for at least an hour and assemble at the last moment; a lukewarm oyster cocktail is flat and faintly metallic.
- The breadGraham bread here means a coarse whole-wheat loaf, not a sweet cracker. Thin brown bread and butter remains the right accompaniment.
The oyster cocktail belongs to the decades when American oysters were still cheap enough to be everyday food: beds along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and in the Chesapeake especially, were being worked at industrial scale, and refrigerated rail cars carried barrels far inland. The invention of the dish is traditionally credited to a San Francisco saloon in the years after the Gold Rush, though the story is repeated more often than it is documented; what is certain is that by the 1890s a spiced tomato-and-horseradish dressing over cold raw oysters had become standard first-course fare in hotels and at home. Butterick, a pattern company publishing for the ambitious middle-class household, treats it as a matter of presentation rather than cookery — the concern is the ice shell, the pepper case, the claret glass, the correct thinness of the buttered brown bread. Within a generation the same dressing, applied to shrimp, would outlive the oyster version, and overharvesting and pollution would make the oyster itself a luxury rather than the assumption it is here.