No. 1056

Oysters a la Villeroi

Huitres a la Villeroi

Poach some large oysters in their own liquor; drain and wipe them dry. Reduce some veloute sauce (No. 415), with the oyster liquor and a little jelly, thicken it with egg-yolks, and leave it to get nearly cold; cover the oysters with one or two layers of this sauce, range them on a baking sheet, one beside the other, and put them away until thoroughly cold, pare them, then dip in beaten eggs, roll them in bread-crumbs, and fry in plenty of hot fat to a golden color; drain and dress them on a folded napkin; lay on top a bunch of fried parsley, and serve with sauce-boat of Madeira sauce (No. 492).

← No. 1055 Osyters a la Rubino Oysters No. 1057 Oysters Baked, a la Crane →

For the Modern Kitchen

A villeroi is a cold sauce coating set firm on a morsel, then breaded and fried — the whole method stands or falls on how stiff that coating gets. Ranhofer assumes you have his numbered sauces on hand; here is what they and the rest of the shorthand mean.

The hinge: the sauce must set hardReduce the velouté until it mounds heavily on a spoon, then chill the coated oysters until the coating is firm and dry to the touch, which will take a couple of hours. A soft coating splits in the fryer and the oyster liquor blows out into the fat.
Poach the oysters two minutes at mostBring the oysters up in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle. Ranhofer gives no time at all; anything approaching a simmer of several minutes turns them to rubber, and they will be cooked again in the fryer.
Velouté (No. 415)A blond roux slackened with veal or chicken stock and simmered until it coats. For oysters, a light fish or chicken velouté works; about a cup of finished sauce coats two dozen oysters.
"A little jelly"This means a savoury meat jelly, not fruit jelly: strong stock reduced or set firm so that it stiffens when cold. Reduced stock, or a spoonful of demi-glace, will do much the same job of making the coating set rather than merely thicken.
Thickening with yolksBeat two yolks with a little of the hot sauce, return off the heat and stir over low heat until it thickens without boiling. Boiling after the yolks go in will curdle the sauce and it will never set cleanly.
"Pare them"Once cold, trim the set coating flush around each oyster with a small knife so the crumbs have a clean edge to cling to. Ragged skirts of sauce burn in the fat.
FryingDeep fat at 350–375F, in small batches, until golden — roughly a minute and a half. Any hotter and the crumbs colour before the interior warms through.
Fried parsleyDry sprigs of curly parsley dropped into the hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing, then drained. Wet parsley will spit violently; blot it thoroughly first.
Madeira sauce (No. 492)A brown sauce finished with Madeira. A good demi-glace with a splash of dry Madeira reduced into it stands in adequately.
YieldFigure five or six oysters a person as a first course; two dozen serves four.

A Little History

Sauces and garnishes named à la Villeroi are generally traced to the Villeroy family of French marshals and courtiers, and by the nineteenth century the term had settled into a precise technique rather than a single recipe: coat a cooked morsel in a stiff, reduced sauce, chill it solid, crumb it and fry. Sweetbreads, chicken wings, brains and lambs' trotters all took the same treatment in the grand kitchens. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 with dozens of oyster preparations — a fair measure of how cheap and abundant oysters still were in New York harbour before the beds were fished out and polluted in the following decades. The dish is the classical French repertoire applied to the most local ingredient Ranhofer had, which was rather the point of Delmonico's.