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Oyster Fricassee
Open and beard some oysters, put them into a stewpan with their own liquor, one ounce of butter and the strained juice of half a lemon; season them with a small quantity each of cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg and let them simmer gently by the side of the fire for a few minutes. Do not cook them too much or they will shrivel up. Beat the yolks of three eggs together with three tablespoonfuls of sherry, strain and pour in with the oysters. Toss the whole over the fire for a minute, then turn them on to a dish and serve.
A classic egg-and-wine liaison built directly on the oysters and their liquor. Everything here hangs on heat control at the end.
- The hinge: the yolks must not boilOnce the yolks and sherry go in, the pan should be barely at a simmer and moving constantly. The sauce thickens between about 160F and 180F; past that it curdles into sweet scrambled egg. Pulling the pan off the burner and finishing on residual heat is the safest way to hit it.
- "By the side of the fire"On a coal range this meant the cooler edge of the top plate. On a modern burner it is low heat, or a heat diffuser. Never a rolling boil.
- How long the oysters actually need"A few minutes" is generous. Shucked oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and they plump, roughly 1 to 2 minutes in barely simmering liquor. The recipe's own warning about shrivelling is the point to obey.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frill of gill tissue around the oyster. It is edible but chewy and gritty; pinch or trim it away after shucking. With shucked oysters sold in tubs this step is usually already done.
- Oysters and their liquorThe recipe gives no quantity. The ounce of butter, three yolks and three tablespoons of sherry suit something on the order of a pint of shucked oysters with their liquor. If you buy them shucked, strain the liquor through a fine sieve or cloth to catch shell fragments.
- An ounce of butterTwo tablespoons. The sauce is deliberately thin and is bound only by yolk, not by flour.
- SherryA dry or medium sherry, not cream sherry. Three tablespoons is enough to perfume the dish without making it sweet; straining the yolk-and-sherry mixture removes chalazae so the sauce stays smooth.
- EggsThe liaison is cooked, but only just. Anyone serving the very young, elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised should use pasteurized yolks.
- Yield and servingYield depends on how many oysters you use; the sauce quantity suits a small first course. Toast points or pastry cases are period-appropriate vehicles. It must go to the table immediately, since the sauce will break if held.
Oyster fricassee belongs to a long Anglo-American line of oyster stews and pan roasts, and its finish of egg yolks beaten with wine is a straight borrowing from French practice, where a liaison of yolks and cream or wine binds a white fricassee at the last second. Oysters were still cheap and abundant in New York when Oscar Tschirky presided over the Waldorf's dining rooms at the turn of the twentieth century: the city sat on enormous beds in the Hudson estuary and Long Island Sound, and oysters appeared on hotel menus raw, broiled, in patties, in soups and in dishes like this one. The heavy hand with cayenne, nutmeg and sherry is characteristic of the period, when the mollusc was common enough that the seasoning, rather than the shellfish, marked the dish as fine cooking. Those beds were largely closed by pollution and overharvesting within a generation, which is why oysters read today as a luxury rather than a hotel standby.