No. 1069

Oysters Stuffed a la Mornay

Huitres Farcies a la Mornay

Poach about thirty medium oysters in their liquor, pare and split them through the center, then stuff this opening with a fine hash made of half lobster, half mushrooms and a little parsley mixed with a little bechamel sauce (No. 409), reduced until it becomes thick; garnish a buttered baking dish with these oysters, cover with a layer of cold Mornay sauce (No. 504), smooth the top nicely and strew over some grated parmesan cheese; and color in a very hot oven or under the gas salamander.

← No. 1068 Oysters, Viennaise Oysters No. 1070 Oysters Stuffed and Fried →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a stock of mother sauces already made, and a coal-fired salamander. The dish itself is straightforward once you have the two sauces and accept that the browning must be fast and fierce.

Poach barelyBring the oysters and their liquor just to a bare simmer and pull them the moment the edges ruffle, roughly one to two minutes. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber, and they still have a blast of oven heat ahead of them.
"Pare and split"Pare means trimming away the tough muscle and any ragged frill, not peeling. Splitting through the center means slicing the oyster horizontally almost all the way through so it opens like a book to hold the stuffing; a medium to large oyster is far easier to manage here than a small one.
The stuffingEqual parts cooked lobster meat and mushrooms (the recipe says only 'half' each), both chopped fine, with parsley, bound with only enough bechamel to hold. Cook the mushrooms out until dry first and reduce the bechamel until it mounds on the spoon, or the filling will run out into the dish.
Mornay, applied coldMornay is a bechamel enriched with cheese, often Gruyere and Parmesan, and in many nineteenth-century versions egg yolk as well. The recipe calls for it cold; a chilled, set sauce is easier to spread smoothly over each oyster, and it melts and glazes under heat.
Salamander equals broilerA gas salamander was an overhead radiant grill. Use your broiler on high with the rack close, or a very hot oven at 500F. You want color in three to five minutes, not slow cooking.
CheeseGrated Parmesan here means a hard aged cheese grated fine so it browns evenly. Pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch will streak rather than glaze.
YieldThirty stuffed oysters serve six as a first course, or four generously. The dish is rich enough that a plain green salad is the whole rest of the plate.
Cross-referencesNos. 409 and 504 are the béchamel and Mornay entries elsewhere in the book. Any competent modern version of either sauce will do; the recipe is really an assembly.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its oyster section is enormous because oysters were then the cheapest luxury in America — brought by oyster boats working New York's own harbor and the beds of Long Island Sound. Mornay sauce is generally traced to the Paris restaurant kitchens of the mid-nineteenth century and named for a figure whose identity was already disputed by the time Ranhofer wrote; what mattered to him was that it was a cheese-enriched béchamel that browned into a glaze. Pairing oysters with lobster and mushrooms and burying both under sauce and Parmesan is thoroughly of its moment: the Gilded Age dining room valued a dish that arrived hot, gratinated, and visibly expensive, and the salamander — a hinged iron plate or gas burner held above the food — existed for exactly that final flash of color.