Oyster Salad
Half gallon each fresh oysters and celery cut into dice, yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, a raw egg whipped, two large spoons melted butter, two tea-spoons each of salt, black pepper and made mustard, one tea-cup vinegar, two pickled cucumbers cut fine. Drain liquor from oysters, throw in hot vinegar on the fire, let them stay until plump, not cooked. Put at once in cold water, drain off, and set in cool place; prepare dressing. Rub salt, pepper and mustard with the yolks finely mashed; add butter, a few drops at a time. When smooth, add beaten egg, then vinegar by the spoonful; set aside. Mix oysters, celery and pickle, tossing up well with a silver fork; salt to taste. Pour dressing over all. -Mrs. Col. G. S. Park, Parkville, Mo. There is not a lover of oysters in existence who does not heartily sympathize with the boy who wanted to spell August "O-r-g-u-s-t," in order to bring it into the list of the months which contain an "r," in all of which oysters are in season. The delicious bivalves furnish an important, and, in most localities, a not expensive article of food; and the ease with which they are prepared for the table, and the great variety of ways in which they may be cooked and served, make them a great favorite with housekeepers.
Oysters in the shell must be kept in a cool cellar, and occasionally sprinkled with salt water. When fresh, the shell is firmly closed; if open, the oyster is dead and unfit for use. The small-shelled oysters have the finest flavor. For the freshness of canned oysters it is necessary to trust to the dealer, but never buy cans the sides of which are swollen. In preparing them for cooking or for the table, carefully remove all bits of shell. Never salt oysters for soups or stews till just before removing them from the fire, or they will shrivel up and be hard, and do not add butter. In frying, a little baking-powder added to the cracker-dust or corn-meal in which they are rolled will greatly improve them. Roasting in the shell preserves the natural flavor. Always serve immediately after cooking, no matter what method is used.
As to nutritive qualities, oysters rank much below butcher's meats, and it is even questioned whether they contain the phosphorus, or brain food, which has been credited to them in company with the finny tribe in general. But, when properly cooked, they are easy of digestion, and very proper food for persons whose occupation is 295) sedentary, and whose duties do not call for heavy muscular exertion. Even for invalids, they are nutritious 'and wholesome, when delicately prepared.
A large Gilded Age party salad built on oysters that are deliberately left short of cooked and a dressing bound with raw egg, then held in a cool place before serving. The reasons it cannot be reproduced today sit alongside a few notes on its vocabulary and scale.
- The oysters are never cooked"let them stay until plump, not cooked" is the whole instruction: a brief dip in hot vinegar on the fire, then straight into cold water. Nothing here brings the oysters to a temperature that addresses Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio vulnificus or norovirus, all of which concentrate in filter-feeding shellfish.
- Then they are held warm-ishThen they are held cool, not cold -- after the dip the oysters go at once into cold water, are drained and "set in a cool place" while the dressing is made. A nineteenth-century cellar is not refrigeration. Barely-heated shellfish held at cellar temperature is the specific failure point, and the acid in the vinegar does not substitute for heat.
- Raw egg in the dressingThe whipped raw egg goes into the mashed yolks and butter and is never cooked. In a dish that also contains untreated shellfish and is held before serving, that is a second uncontrolled risk rather than the ordinary raw-egg-in-mayonnaise question.
- Scale makes it worseHalf a gallon of shucked oysters is on the order of 100 to 250 oysters depending on size: a party quantity. A bowl that size stands while it is served, and a single contaminated oyster is distributed through the whole thing. If you want oyster salad, work from a current recipe with properly cooked oysters.
- "Made mustard"Not dry mustard powder but prepared mustard, already mixed with vinegar or water — closer to a plain yellow or English table mustard than to anything sweetened.
- A tea-cup of vinegarA period tea-cup runs smaller than a modern measuring cup; usage varied, and it is often reckoned at somewhere around six fluid ounces. "Two large spoons" of butter is this book's contrast with its "tea-spoons" -- that is, tablespoons.
- The silver forkSilver was specified because iron and steel of the period discoloured on contact with vinegar and egg yolk, and left a metallic taste. Stainless steel makes the point obsolete.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the great era of cheap American oysters, when rail and ice had pushed Chesapeake and Gulf shellfish deep inland — far enough that a contributor in Parkville, Missouri, could call for half a gallon of them without comment. Oyster salad, oyster patties and scalloped oysters were standard supper and reception food in the 1880s, the sort of thing that filled a long table at a church social or a wedding breakfast. The headnote's joke about spelling August with an "r" rehearses the old rule that oysters are eaten only in months containing that letter, generally explained as a matter of spawning season and of the difficulty of keeping shellfish through a hot summer without ice; the same warm-weather hazard it gestures at is precisely what makes this particular preparation unmakeable now. Note too the aside that oysters "rank much below butcher's meats" nutritionally, and the doubt cast on their reputation as brain food — a small skirmish in the period's enthusiasm for phosphorus as a nerve tonic.