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Oyster Poulette
Place thirty-six freshly-opened oysters in a saucepan with a little of their own liquor, one ounce of butter, half a pinch of salt and pepper and parboil for three minutes, adding half a pint of hollandaise sauce; stew well together for two minutes longer, but without letting the liquor boil, add one teaspoonful of chopped parsley and the juice of half a lemon, stir slightly and serve very hot.
A brief oyster stew dressed with hollandaise rather than the egg-thickened velouté the name usually implies. Everything depends on heat control: the sauce must never reach a boil.
- Keep it below a simmerHollandaise breaks above roughly 180F, and the recipe says plainly not to let the liquor boil. Hold the pan at a bare tremble, off the burner if need be, and fold the sauce in rather than stirring hard.
- Half a pintOne cup of hollandaise, about 8 fl oz. Made with two or three yolks and 4-6 oz butter, that is roughly a single standard batch.
- Cooking the oystersThree minutes of parboiling plus two more in the sauce is longer than modern practice. Shucked oysters are done when the edges ruffle and they plump, which takes 60-90 seconds in their own hot liquor; beyond that they tighten and turn rubbery.
- Oyster count and sizeThirty-six shucked oysters is roughly a pint to a pint and a half of meats with liquor, depending on grade; shucked oysters are usually sold by the pint or the quart. Enough for about four as a first course, or three as a main.
- "Half a pinch"An imprecise old measure; read it as a very small amount, less than 1/8 teaspoon. Salt lightly at the start; oyster liquor and the lemon in the hollandaise both carry salt and acid already.
- The liquorUse only a few tablespoons, and strain it through a fine sieve or cheesecloth to catch shell grit. Too much liquor thins the sauce and there is no roux here to hold it.
- ServingBecause the sauce cannot be reheated, plate immediately over toast points, in puff-pastry cases or in warmed shells. Warm the plates first.
Sauce "a la poulette" takes its name from the French for a young hen; the usual explanation is that it points not to chicken in the dish but to the egg yolks that thicken it, though that reading is traditional rather than documented. Classically it is a velouté finished with yolks, cream and lemon, used on tripe, mussels, sweetbreads and frogs' legs. Oscar Tschirky's version substitutes hollandaise, which reaches much the same place by a shorter road, yolks and butter in place of yolks and stock. Oysters were cheap and plentiful in New York when this book appeared in 1896; the Waldorf could call for three dozen freshly opened ones without comment, and many oyster preparations run through the book's pages, from broiled and fried to stewed, curried and creamed.