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Raw Oysters
Wash the shells, open, detaching the flat shell, loosen from the deep shell, but leave them in it, and serve half dozen on a plate, with a quarter of lemon in center. Eat with salt, pepper and lemon juice or vinegar.
In serving them without the shells the most attractive way is in a dish of ice, made by freezing water in a tin form shaped like a salad bowl, or in a block of ice from which a cavity has been melted with a hot flat-iron. They should first be drained well in a colander, sprinkled with plenty of pepper and salt, and placed on the ice and let remain in a cool place for half an hour or until time of serving.
A simpler and equally delicious way is to drain well, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place the dish on ice or in a dish of cold water for half an hour before serving, adding bits of ice. Serve with horse-radish, Chili sauce, slices of lemon, or simply vinegar.
This is a serving method rather than a cooked dish, and nearly all of it still holds. The parts that need translating are the ice-carving apparatus and the food-safety assumptions of a period before refrigeration was universal.
- Sourcing is the whole recipeSince nothing here is cooked, the only real variable is the oyster. Buy from a dealer who can show harvest tags, keep them cup-side down at 34-40F under a damp cloth, never sealed in plastic or sitting in water, and shuck to order. Discard any that gape and do not close when tapped.
- Who should skip themRaw oysters carry Vibrio bacteria and norovirus that cooking would destroy. People who are pregnant, immunocompromised, or have liver disease, diabetes or haemochromatosis should not eat them raw at all; Vibrio vulnificus infection is far more dangerous in those groups and can be fatal.
- "Detaching the flat shell"The flat shell is the top or lid. Go in at the hinge with a proper oyster knife, run the blade along the underside of the flat shell to cut the adductor muscle, lift it off, then free the meat from the deep cup so it lifts cleanly with the fork. Fold a towel over the shell to protect your hand.
- The ice bowlFreezing water in a tin salad-bowl form still works, and a large mixing bowl set inside a slightly larger one, with water frozen between them, gives the same result. The hot flat-iron trick — melting a cavity into a block of ice — needs nothing more elaborate now than a metal bowl of boiling water pressed into a block.
- Half an hour on iceThe chilling is for temperature, not flavour development. Shucked oysters should be held at or below 40F throughout, which means genuine ice contact, not merely a cool larder. Anything approaching room temperature for that half hour is a bad idea.
- Draining and seasoningModern practice runs opposite to the instruction to drain well and salt: the oyster liquor is the best part and is now served with the meat. If you do drain shucked oysters, season sparingly — they are already saline — and skip the salt entirely for anything served on the half shell.
- QuantityHalf a dozen per plate is what the recipe specifies. Reckon six per person as an appetiser, a dozen if it is the centre of a light meal.
- The accompanimentsChili sauce here is the thick spiced tomato condiment of the period, closer to modern cocktail sauce than to a hot pepper sauce. Grated horseradish, lemon, and a sharp vinegar all remain standard; a mignonette of shallot in red wine vinegar is the modern equivalent of the plain vinegar suggested.
Nineteenth-century America ate oysters on a scale hard to imagine now — Chesapeake and Gulf beds supplied cellars, saloons and street stalls in every city on the rail network, and an oyster was cheap food, not a luxury. The Dixie Cook Book could assume its readers had access to barrels shipped inland on ice, which is why the effort goes into presentation rather than procurement. The elaborate business of freezing water in a tin mould or melting a hollow in an ice block with a heated flat-iron belongs to the period when household ice was plentiful and mechanical refrigeration was not: ice was the display material as well as the coolant. The decline came later, as pollution, over-harvesting and typhoid scares in the early twentieth century closed beds and made the raw oyster the more careful pleasure it is today.