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Fricasseed Oysters
Take a slice of raw ham (corned and not smoked), soak in boiling water for half an hour, cut in very small slices and put in a sauce-pan with two-thirds pint of veal or chicken broth well strained, the liquor from one quart oysters, one small onion minced very fine, a little chopped parsley, sweet marjoram and pepper. Let these simmer twenty minutes, boiling rapidly for two or three minutes. Then skim well and add one scant table-spoon of corn starch mixed smoothly in one-third cup of milk, stir constantly, and when it boils add the oysters and one ounce of butter; just let it come to a boil, remove oysters to a deeper dish, then beat one egg and add to it gradually some of the hot broth, and when cooked stir it into the pan ; season with salt and pour all over the oysters. When placed upon the table some squeeze the juice of a lemon over it.
A ham-and-oyster stew thickened twice — first with cornstarch, then with an egg liaison. The technique is sound; the wording and the timings need translation.
- The hinge: the egg goes in off the boilBeat the egg, temper it with hot broth a ladle at a time, then return it to the pan with the heat low and stir until it thickens, somewhere around 170-180F. The original's "when cooked" invites overheating, which curdles the sauce into threads.
- Oysters need one minute, not moreA quart of shucked oysters brought "just to a boil" means about 60 seconds, until the edges ruffle. Anything longer shrinks them and turns them rubbery, and they will keep cooking in the hot dish while you finish the sauce.
- "Corned and not smoked" hamCorned here means brine-cured without smoke. Unsmoked gammon, a piece of fresh-cured picnic ham, or pancetta all work; ordinary supermarket smoked ham will dominate the oysters. The half hour in boiling water is to draw out salt, so do not skip it.
- MeasuresTwo-thirds pint of broth is about 1 1/3 cups; one ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. The liquor from a quart of oysters runs roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups — strain it through a fine sieve or cloth, since it often carries grit and shell.
- The two-stage simmerTwenty minutes at a simmer draws flavor from the ham and onion; the two or three minutes of hard boiling reduces and concentrates before you skim.
- Salt last, and only if neededHam and oyster liquor are both salty, and the recipe wisely holds salt until the end. Taste after the egg goes in.
- HerbsSweet marjoram is still sold as marjoram; a teaspoon of chopped fresh, or half that dried, is plenty against a delicate oyster broth.
- YieldServes four as a main course over toast or in pastry shells, six as a first course. The lemon at the table is worth doing — it cuts the egg-and-butter richness.
The Dixie Cook Book, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox in the 1880s from an earlier Northern collection reworked for Southern households, devotes a full section to shell-fish because Gulf and Chesapeake oysters were among the cheapest proteins in nineteenth-century America — shipped inland by the barrel in cold weather and packed in cans. "Fricassee" in this period simply meant meat or fish cooked in a modest amount of liquid and served in its own thickened sauce, usually pale rather than browned; the name comes from the verb fricasser, to cut up and cook, and the egg-and-milk finish here is the classic French liaison. Pairing cured pork with oysters is a long-standing habit of Southern and Chesapeake cooking, the salt and fat standing in for the depth a short-cooked shellfish broth cannot supply on its own; the insistence on ham that is corned and not smoked shows a cook who knew exactly how easily smoke overwhelms an oyster.