No. 1052

Oysters a la Bearnaise, Tomatoed

Huitres a la Bearnaise Tomatee

Place some large oysters in a saucepan on the fire; poach them slightly in their own liquor, drain and suppress the hard parts, then roll them in a sautoir containing cooked fine herbs. Butter some boat-shaped tartlet molds, line them with a delicate chicken forcemeat (No. 62); and lay one oyster and some of the fine herbs in every mold; cover over with more forcemeat, so that it is well filled and rounded on the top, then poach, unmold, and dip them in beaten eggs; roll in bread-crumbs, and fry in clarified butter. Serve a separate sauce-boat of tomato bearnaise sauce (No. 433).

← No. 1051 Mussels with Shallot Oysters No. 1053 Oysters a la Boucicault →

For the Modern Kitchen

A barquette of chicken mousseline built around a single oyster, breaded and fried in butter. Ranhofer assumes you have his forcemeat and sauce numbers to hand; everything else here is timing and vessel.

Poach the oysters barely at all"Slightly" means until the edges just ruffle, roughly 30 seconds to a minute in their own liquor off a bare simmer. They will be cooked a second time inside the forcemeat and a third in the butter, and an oyster that is firm at this stage ends up rubbery.
Suppress the hard partsThis means trimming away the tough adductor muscle, the pale nub on the side of the oyster. Nothing else needs removing.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, what most kitchens now call a sauté pan. It is used here only to coat the oysters in the herb mixture off the heat or over the barest flame.
Cooked fine herbsA duxelles-like preparation: chopped mushrooms and shallot cooked down in butter with parsley, kept dry rather than wet. Ranhofer gives no number for it here, so the exact formula is not on this page. Whatever the mix, it should be nearly a paste, or it will loosen the forcemeat.
Chicken forcemeat, No. 62A mousseline-style forcemeat: raw chicken breast pounded and sieved, bound with panada or egg white, worked over ice with cream. It must stay cold at every stage or it breaks. Keep the bowl on ice while you fill the molds.
Boat-shaped tartlet moldsBarquette molds, about 3 inches long. Butter them well and fill without air pockets; press the forcemeat in with a small spoon or a piped bag rather than dropping it.
Poach means gently, in a water bathPoach means gently -- Ranhofer says only "poach." Set the filled molds in a pan of hot water reaching halfway up, cover loosely, and hold the water below a simmer until the forcemeat is set and springs back, around 15 to 20 minutes. Water that boils will curdle the mousseline and blow the barquettes.
Chill before breadingThe original leaves this out, but unmolded barquettes are fragile while warm. Cool them completely so the egg-and-crumb coating sticks and the shapes survive the pan.
Clarified butterWhole butter burns at frying heat because of its milk solids; clarified butter takes considerably more heat, its smoke point sitting well above the roughly 350F this frying needs. Fry to a light brown on both sides, no more than two or three minutes total, since the interior is already cooked.
Tomato béarnaiseSauce No. 433 is béarnaise slackened with reduced tomato purée. It is an emulsion and will break if held hot; make it last and keep it barely warm.
YieldOne oyster per barquette.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after some three decades running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and the book devotes extensive space to oysters: New York in the late nineteenth century ate oysters in extraordinary volume, cheaply and constantly, from the beds of the Hudson estuary and Long Island Sound. What Delmonico's sold was not the oyster itself but the treatment, and this recipe is the treatment carried about as far as it will go, a single bivalve hidden inside a chicken mousseline, breaded, fried and sauced. The name is a French chef's shorthand rather than a regional dish: bearnaise is traditionally traced to a restaurant near Paris in the 1830s and said to be named for the birthplace of Henri IV, though that account is tradition rather than documented fact; adding tomato to it produces what later codification would call sauce Choron. Ranhofer's habit of cross-referencing numbered preparations, so that a finished dish is assembled from three or four other entries, reflects a brigade kitchen where the forcemeat and the sauce were somebody else's standing work.