No. 1070

Oysters Stuffed and Fried

Huitres Farcies et Frites

Poach large oysters in their own liquor: when cold, trim them and cut them through their thickest part without separating the pieces, then stuff this opening with a preparation of cooked fine herbs mingled with a reduced and thick bechamel sauce (No. 409); press down the top part so as to attach them together, then season. Just when ready to serve bread-crumb them English style (No. 13), and fry them in clarified butter, and after they have attained a fine color, drain and serve them at once on folded napkins.

← No. 1069 Oysters Stuffed a la Mornay Oysters No. 1071 Oysters with Curry—Indian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have a brigade and a numbered cross-reference system; the dish itself is straightforward once you accept that the oysters are cooked twice and must not be overcooked either time.

Poaching, not simmeringBring the oysters up in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, roughly one to two minutes, then pull them off the heat and let them cool in the liquor. Anything approaching a real simmer for more than a couple of minutes turns them tough, and they get a second cooking in the fryer.
Use the biggest oysters you can getThe whole method depends on an oyster thick enough to split laterally without cutting through. Select or large East Coast oysters work; small Kumamotos or similar will not take the stuffing.
What the cross-references meanNo. 409 is the bechamel the recipe calls for, reduced until thick enough to hold a shape when cold. No. 13 is Ranhofer's English breading (egg, then fine breadcrumbs pressed on firmly); the exact procedure is set out in that entry, not here.
"Cooked fine herbs"This means a cooked herb preparation rather than raw herbs, and in Ranhofer such mixtures commonly take chopped mushrooms and shallot sweated in butter with parsley. Chervil and tarragon can go in at the end. Whichever way it is made, the mixture must be dry and stiff, or it will blow out of the oyster in the fat.
Chill before breadingStuff and press the oysters, then refrigerate them until firm before crumbing. Ranhofer says to bread them only just before serving; a warm, soft stuffing will separate the two halves in the pan.
Clarified butter and its limitClarified butter takes a much higher heat than whole butter, smoking around 450F rather than about 350F, which is why the recipe specifies it: whole butter will burn before the crumb colors. Ranhofer gives no temperature; fry in a shallow pan for about a minute a side to a deep gold.
Serving"On folded napkins" is the period presentation for anything fried dd a linen napkin on the platter to absorb fat. Paper does the job now. Figure six to eight oysters a person as a first course; lemon and nothing else.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for most of the last third of the nineteenth century, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire in one volume, numbered and cross-referenced like a reference work. The oyster chapter is unusually long because New York in this period was an oyster city on a scale hard to imagine now: beds in the Hudson and East Rivers and along Long Island supplied cellars, stands and every restaurant in town, and oysters were cheap enough to be a staple rather than a luxury. What Ranhofer does here is treat that abundant local shellfish with the full apparatus of French haute cuisine dd b dd which is precisely the trick that made Delmonico's reputation. The dish sits in a run of three consecutive oyster preparations (Mornay, stuffed and fried, curried) that shows the same ingredient pushed through three different national idioms in the space of a page.