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Oyster Soup
Blanch two or three dozen oysters in their own liquor, beard them, and cut them into small pieces. Put two ounces of butter in a saucepan with a tablespoonful of flour and mix well over the fire, then stir in as much fish stock as will make the required quantity of soup. Continue stirring until it boils, then put in the oysters and their liquor, previously strained, add a moderate quantity of minced parsley, salt and pepper to taste and a little grated nutmeg. Beat the yolks of two eggs in with the juice of half a lemon and strain them; move the soup off the fire and stir in the beaten eggs. Pour it in a soup tureen, and serve with a plate of sippets of toast or croutons of fried bread.
A classic egg-thickened oyster soup that depends entirely on heat control at the end. Everything before the liaison is straightforward; the last thirty seconds are where it succeeds or curdles.
- The hinge: the egg liaisonOnce the yolks and lemon go in, the soup must not return to a boil or even a strong simmer, or the yolks will scramble into threads. Pull the pan fully off the heat, temper a ladle of hot soup into the beaten yolks first, then stir that back in and serve at once.
- Do not cook the oysters twiceBlanching means bringing them to the point where the edges just ruffle in their own liquor, perhaps a minute, no more. They are added back to the finished soup only to heat through; oysters held at a boil turn to rubber within a few minutes.
- BeardingThe beard is the dark frill of gill tissue around the oyster. On shucked oysters from a jar it is often already minimal, and the step is frequently skipped today; trim it if the oysters are large and the frill is tough.
- Strain the liquor twiceStrain the liquor -- Oyster liquor carries shell grit and sand. Pass it through a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter or muslin before it goes into the soup, or the seasoning will be gritty.
- Quantities and yieldTwo ounces of butter with one tablespoon of flour is a very loose roux; expect a thin, broth-like soup rather than a chowder. "As much fish stock as will make the required quantity" leaves the volume, and so the number of servings, to the cook; the recipe states no yield.
- Salt lastOyster liquor and most fish stock are both already saline. Season only after the liquor has gone in, and taste again after the lemon, which will sharpen the perception of salt.
- SippetsSippets are small triangles or fingers of toasted bread, served alongside rather than floated in. Croutons of fried bread mean cubes fried in butter or clarified fat, not the dried-out oven kind.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use a restrained hand. Pre-ground nutmeg has largely lost the volatile oils that make this seasoning work with shellfish.
Oyster soups and stews were a fixture of nineteenth-century American dining because oysters were cheap, abundant and shipped inland by rail and barrel in enormous quantities; New York in particular ate them by the plateful at oyster cellars and saloons. What marks this version as Waldorf cooking rather than street food is the French finish: a butter-and-flour base, fish stock instead of milk, and a liaison of egg yolks and lemon, which is the classical technique for enriching a soup without further thickening. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, was compiled while he was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, and it can be read as an attempt to give American home cooks the grammar of a hotel kitchen, with the stock taken for granted here and the sippets served on a separate plate.