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Curried Oysters
Put the liquor drained from a quart of oysters into a sauce-pan, add a half-cup of butter, two table-spoons flour, and one of curry powder, well mixed; let boil, add oysters, and a little salt; boil up once and serve.
A short, blunt recipe that works well if you treat the oysters as the last-second addition they are meant to be. Nearly everything here is about the sauce; the shellfish is in and out.
- Boil up once, and mean it"Boil up once and serve" is the hinge. Oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle, roughly 60 to 90 seconds in simmering liquid. Anything approaching a genuine rolling boil for more than a moment shrinks them and turns them rubbery.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A quart is roughly 2 lb of drained meats -- anywhere from about three to five dozen depending on size -- and yields the liquor the sauce is built on. Bottled or tub oysters from a fish counter come packed the same way; save every drop of the juice.
- If the liquor is shortA quart of oysters gives perhaps a cup of liquor, sometimes less. Two tablespoons of flour to that much liquid makes a fairly thick sauce, and the half-cup of butter is generous for it, so thin with a little cream, milk or fish stock if it is heavier than a spoon-coating consistency.
- Half a cup of butterThat is 4 oz, one modern stick. It is a period-typical ratio and produces a rich, faintly broken sauce; cutting it to 3 or 4 tablespoons gives a cleaner result without changing the character.
- Curry powderNineteenth-century American curry powder was generally turmeric-led, with coriander and fenugreek, though blends varied and some carried a good deal of cayenne. One tablespoon in this quantity is assertive. The recipe stirs the curry into the butter and flour and adds the lot to the liquor; if you prefer, cook the mixture a minute in the pan first so the spice does not taste raw.
- Grit and shellStrain the liquor through a fine sieve or cloth before it goes in the pan. Sand settles out of shucked oysters and there is no later chance to remove it.
- Yield and servingServes four to six. Toast points, pastry shells or plain boiled rice all suit it, rice especially with the curry.
Curry powder reached the American South by way of British trade and British cookbooks, and by the 1880s it was an ordinary pantry item sold ready-blended by grocers, used, it is often said, less as Indian cooking than as a general savory seasoning for cream sauces, soups and shellfish. Oysters, meanwhile, were abundant and cheap along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, shipped inland shucked in kegs and cans, which is why The Dixie Cook Book can open a recipe with the assumption that the reader has a quart of them and their liquor to hand. The pairing of an English-style butter-and-flour sauce with curry powder and local shellfish is typical of the book: fashionable seasoning applied to whatever came off the boat.