Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Bisque of Oysters
Bisque of Oysters
Place about thirty medium sized oysters in a saucepan together with their own juice, and poach them over a hot fire, after which drain them well. Then fry a shallot colorless in some butter together with an onion, sprinkle over them a little curry and add some of the oyster juice, seasoning with salt and red pepper; pound the oysters to a good firm paste, moistening them with a little of their juice, and strain through a fine tammy-cloth; warm them over the fire, but do not let them boil; add a small quantity of thickening of potato flour mixed with a little water, (about a tablespoonful for each quart of the mixture), and when about to serve, incorporate some cream and fine butter, garnishing with some chopped oysters and mushrooms, mixed with bread crumbs and herbs; add a little seasoning of salt, pepper and nutmeg, some raw egg yolks and roll this mixture into ball-shaped pieces, place them on a well buttered baking sheet in a slack oven and poach them, then serve.
A classic French-method shellfish bisque written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen, where the reader was assumed to know what a tammy and a slack oven were. Two things carry the dish: keeping the oysters off the boil, and treating the garnish as a separate small preparation.
- Never let it boilOnce the pounded oysters go back on the heat, the soup must stay below a simmer. Boiling tightens the oyster protein into grit and can split the finished cream. Hold it at around 170-180F.
- Poaching the oysters"Poach them over a hot fire" means only until the edges ruffle and they firm slightly, roughly a minute or two. Anything longer and you are pounding rubber, which no amount of straining will fix.
- Tammy-clothA tammy was a fine worsted straining cloth, worked with a wooden pestle to force purée through. A blender followed by a fine chinois or a double layer of rinsed cheesecloth does the same job with less labour.
- Potato flourThis is potato starch, sold under that name today, not potato flour made from dried cooked potato. A tablespoon per quart slaked in cold water gives a light body; add it off the boil and it thickens almost at once.
- CurryCurry powder here is a background seasoning rather than a flavour in its own right; the recipe asks only for 'a little', and a heavier hand will take over the oyster.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. It appears throughout Oscar's seasoning and belongs in pinches.
- Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is about 275-300F. The garnish balls are bound with raw yolk and want gentle heat so they set without browning or weeping; allow enough time at that low temperature for them to set through.
- YieldThirty medium oysters with their liquor, finished with cream, makes a modest quantity of soup -- a first course for a handful of people rather than a tureen. The recipe gives no cream quantity: start with a cup and judge by consistency.
Bisque began in French cookery as a purée of crustaceans, most often crayfish, thickened historically with pounded shell and rice or bread before flour-based liaisons took over; the name is generally traced to Biscay, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. Oysters were the obvious American substitute. When Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms at the turn of the twentieth century, New York harbour and the Chesapeake were still shipping oysters by the barrel and they were cheap enough to pound thirty of them into a soup base without anyone flinching. What marks this as hotel cooking rather than home cooking is the garnish: instead of stirring chopped oysters into the bowl, the kitchen builds a separate forcemeat with mushrooms, crumbs and egg yolk, rolls it, bakes it gently and floats it. That is a brigade with a spare pair of hands, and a dining room that expected to see the work.