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Oysters with Parmesan Cheese
Drain the oysters as free as possible from liquor; spread a dish thickly with butter, lay the oysters on it, strew finely-minced parsley over them, season with pepper, pour one-half glass of champagne over and cover thickly with grated Parmesan cheese. Put the dish into the oven, and when nicely browned on top, drain the fat carefully off the oysters, and serve, while very hot, in the same dish.
A gratin of oysters in butter, champagne and Parmesan, written for a cook who already knows that oysters overcook in seconds. The whole dish turns on getting them out of the oven the moment the cheese colors.
- Heat and timeThe recipe states no temperature or time. A hot oven, in the region of 450-475F, or a high broiler, suits the dish: the oysters want only a few minutes, and should be pulled as soon as the cheese browns and the edges have just ruffled. Held longer they shrink, weep and turn rubbery.
- "One-half glass of champagne"Genuinely imprecise, and the recipe gives no quantity of oysters to scale it against. A period wineglass measure is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fluid ounces, which would make half a glass roughly 2 tablespoons, though a champagne glass is not a standard measure. Err low; the dish should not be swimming, or the oysters poach instead of roasting.
- Drain the oysters properlyWet oysters are the usual failure here. Tip them into a sieve, let them sit several minutes, then blot them. Their liquor plus the wine plus the butter is more liquid than a browning dish can lose in five minutes.
- The dish itself"A dish" means a shallow, oven-safe gratin dish or a metal pie plate, thickly buttered, with the oysters in a single uncrowded layer. Stacked oysters steam each other. The recipe expects it to go to the table, so choose one you would serve from.
- ParmesanGrate a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano or a good aged grana yourself. Pre-grated cheese carries anti-caking starch, which browns dully and can go grainy over a moist filling.
- SeasoningPepper only, as written, and it is deliberate: oyster liquor and hard cheese together bring plenty of salt. Taste before you add any.
- Draining the fatTilt the dish and spoon off the pooled butter before serving, as instructed. Skipping this leaves a greasy slick under the cheese crust.
- YieldFigure six to eight oysters per person as a first course; two dozen serves three or four with bread.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, published his Cook Book in 1896, when New York ate oysters at every level of society and every hour of the day: cheap from cellar stalls, and dressed up like this in hotel dining rooms. Baking shellfish under grated hard cheese is standard European gratin practice. Parmesan reached American kitchens of the period as an imported luxury grating cheese. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of the book, which does not bother to state a temperature or a time.