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Oysters in Cases
Open and blanch a couple of dozen medium-sized oysters in a saucepan with one wineglassful of white wine and half an ounce of butter, and season with a pinch of pepper and a little nutmeg. Cook for five minutes, and add one pint of well reduced veloute sauce; cooking for another five minutes, and adding half an ounce of crayfish butter and stirring occasionally. Fill the cases with four oysters each and the garnishing equally divided. Sprinkle over a little fresh breadcrumbs, and arrange them on a toasting pan. Spread a little butter over each patty, and place in a moderate oven for five minutes. Have a hot dish at hand with a folded napkin spread over it; place the patties on it and serve.
Oysters, Indian Style Put one-half tablespoonful each of curry powder and flour in a small saucepan; mix in gradually a teacupful of cream, one tablespoonful of finely chopped onion and a small quantity of finely chopped apple, season to taste with salt and pepper, and stew the whole gently for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. Put a teacupful of well washed rice in a saucepan of water and boil until tender. The rice should be quite dry when cooked. Put a dozen oysters in the sauce, add a little lemon juice, and leave until hot. Make a wall of the rice on a hot dish, and pour the oysters in the center. Serve while very hot.
Two hotel-kitchen oyster dishes from the Waldorf, both built on the assumption that a cook has stock sauces standing ready. The main adjustment is timing: the oysters here are cooked three separate times, which is more than they can take.
- Oysters overcook fastBlanched five minutes, simmered another five in the sauce, then baked five more, oysters turn to erasers. Blanch only until the edges ruffle, about a minute, then reserve them and add them back to the finished sauce off the heat just before filling the cases. The same applies to the curried version, where "leave until hot" is the correct instruction and should be taken literally.
- "Cases"Baked pastry shells — croustades or small vol-au-vent, and in a hotel kitchen these would have been made in-house from puff paste. Frozen puff-pastry shells or good bread croustades work. Two dozen oysters at four per case gives six servings.
- WineglassfulRoughly 2 fl oz, a quarter cup, in period usage. Not a modern stemmed glass.
- TeacupfulGenuinely loose in books of this date, generally somewhere between a half and three quarters of a cup. Start at a scant three quarters for the cream and adjust; the curry sauce should nap, not flood.
- Veloute sauceA white roux thinned with veal, chicken or fish stock rather than milk. "Well reduced" means thick enough to coat a spoon heavily, or the filling will soak the pastry. For oysters, a fish- or chicken-stock veloute is right, and a pint is enough for two dozen oysters with sauce to spare.
- Crayfish butterShells of cooked crayfish pounded with butter, then strained — a standard hotel garnish butter that no longer sits in home refrigerators. Shrimp or lobster shells pounded with softened butter and passed through a sieve give the same effect. It goes in off the heat so it does not break.
- "The garnishing"The recipe never says what the garnishing is, and nothing else in the text accounts for it. In patties of this kind it was often sliced cooked mushrooms, sometimes truffle, so about a cup of sauteed mushrooms added to the sauce is a reasonable reading.
- Moderate ovenUsually reckoned at roughly 350-375F. Five minutes is only to color the crumbs and heat the shells; the filling should already be hot going in.
- The rice wallBoiled and drained rice, mounded in a ring around the edge of a hot platter with the curried oysters poured into the well. Dry rice matters, since wet grains collapse the wall.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf dining rooms rather than its stoves, and the 1896 book that carries his name reads like a working inventory of what a large American hotel kitchen could send out on a given night — which is why both of these recipes start by assuming a pot of veloute and a crock of crayfish butter already exist. Oysters were the cheap luxury of the era: New York harbor and the Chesapeake supplied them by the barrel, and a hotel could afford to serve them four to a pastry case as a small hot entree between courses. The second recipe's name is worth noting: "Indian style" in American and British hotel cookery of the 1890s meant curry powder, onion, apple and cream, a formula that reached New York by way of Anglo-Indian British kitchens rather than from India, and the sweet apple in a savory cream sauce is its clearest fingerprint. Serving on a folded napkin, as directed for the patties, was standard fine-dining practice for anything fried or baked in pastry — the linen is customarily said to have absorbed butter and kept the shells from sliding on the silver.