No. 1058

Oyster Brochettes with Truffles

Huitres en Brochettes aux Truffes

Poach in their liquor three dozen large oysters; when they are cold, pare and season, run a small wooden skewer through their centers, alternating each oyster with a round slice of cooked truffle. Dip these brochettes into a well reduced allemande sauce (No. 407), into which has been added chopped mushrooms and fine herbs. Range them at once on a baking sheet, and leave them in the ice-box till the sauce is thoroughly cold; three hours later, detach them from the sheet, remove the superflous sauce, and shape them nicely, roll them in white bread-crumbs, dip them in beaten eggs, and again in bread-crumbs, smooth the surfaces, and plunge the brochettes into very hot fat, until they attain a golden color; then withdraw the skewers and dress them at once on a folded napkin. Garnish with fried parsley.

← No. 1057 Oysters Baked, a la Crane Oysters No. 1059 Broiled Oysters, Maitre d'Hotel and on Skewe →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing what French kitchens call an attereau: skewered morsels sheathed in a stiff sauce, chilled solid, then breaded and deep-fried. Everything depends on the sauce setting hard.

The hinge: the sauce must be cold and stiffThe reduced allemande has to be thick enough to cling in a paste-like coat and then chill to a firm putty, or the breading will slide and the skewers may burst in the fat. Reduce it until a spoon leaves a clear track, and give it the full three hours refrigerated (overnight is better). Freezing the coated skewers for 20 minutes before frying is common modern insurance.
Poach the oysters barely at all"Poach in their liquor" means 30 seconds to a minute over moderate heat, just until the edges ruffle and the bodies firm. Held longer they shrink and turn to rubber, and they still have a second cooking ahead of them in the fryer.
"Pare and season"Trim off the tough dark frill and any bit of adductor muscle so the oysters skewer neatly, then season with salt, pepper and a little lemon. Pat them thoroughly dry; surface moisture is the other reason coatings fail.
Allemande sauceNo. 407 is a velouté (white stock thickened with roux) finished with egg yolks, cream and lemon. A firm velouté enriched with yolk gives the same result. "Fine herbs" is fines herbes: chervil, tarragon, chives and parsley, chopped fine.
TrufflesRanhofer almost certainly means the black winter truffle, cooked in Madeira or stock and sliced into coins. Preserved whole truffles work; truffle oil does not, since the point is a firm round slice that alternates with the oysters. Thin rounds of sauteed cremini with a shaving of truffle are an honest substitute.
Skewers and fryingRanhofer specifies a small wooden skewer; short bamboo ones serve, loaded so the pieces touch. He gives no temperature: "very hot fat" is roughly 360-375F, and two to three minutes gives the golden color. The skewers are pulled out as soon as the brochettes leave the fat, before they are dressed on the napkin, which only works if the coating has set into a solid sleeve.
Fried parsleyFlat-leaf sprigs, dried completely, dropped into the same fat for about 10 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brittle-green. Wet parsley in hot fat spits violently.
YieldThree dozen oysters gives roughly six to eight brochettes of five or six oysters each, enough for six as a first course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style exactly: an oyster, then the cheapest of local abundance, dressed with the most expensive import in the larder. The technique is standard French garde-manger of the period, the attereau or brochette, in which cooked morsels are bound in a heavily reduced sauce, chilled until the sauce sets, then crumbed and fried so that the coating melts back to sauce inside its crust. American oysters were shipped and eaten in enormous quantities in the second half of the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the era give dozens of preparations for them; the elaborate ones like this were a way of lifting a commonplace shellfish onto a restaurant card. The reference to No. 407 for the allemande is Ranhofer's own, a reminder that the book was built as a working index for a professional kitchen rather than a book to read straight through.