No. 2376

Oyster Tart or Pie, Smith Style

Tarte aux Huitres a la Smith

Poach in their own liquor three dozen medium oysters, drain and remove the muscles or ligaments. Fry in two ounces of butter, four ounces of bacon cut in three-sixteenths of an inch squares, two ounces of onions cut the same size, and half a pound of peeled and seedless tomatoes cut into five-eighths of an inch pieces; add the oyster liquor, reduce the whole with a pint of veloute sauce (No. 415), and when well done and seasoned nicely, add the oysters. Place all of this into a deep pie dish (Fig. 183), and lay on the edge, after slightly wetting it, a narrow band of puff paste (No. 146) an eighth of an inch thick and half an inch wide; moisten the top of this band, and cover the whole with a layer of paste made of fragments of puff paste; cut away the extending edges, and decorate the top with bits of the paste rolled out to one-eighth of an inch in thickness; pinch the edges round the border, and egg over the surface twice, then cook the pie in a hot oven for twenty to thirty minutes, and serve on a folded napkin. Either salt or smoked bacon can be used.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade kitchen and a numbered sauce cupboard, so the work here is mostly in the preparation before anything goes into the dish. Two things decide whether it succeeds: the oysters must be barely poached, and the filling must be thick and fully cooled before the pastry goes on.

Poach the oysters briefly"Poach in their own liquor" means 30 to 60 seconds, until the edges just ruffle. They will cook again in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, and oysters given any real simmering time turn to rubber.
The muscle to removeThe "muscle or ligament" is the tough pale adductor where the oyster was attached to its shell. Pinch it off with your fingers; it stays chewy no matter how the pie is cooked.
VeloutéNo. 415 is a white velvet sauce: a pale butter-flour roux moistened with veal or chicken stock, simmered and strained. A pint is 2 cups. A well-made blond roux sauce of the same thickness will do the same work.
Reduce further than feels rightThe oyster liquor, the tomatoes and the oysters themselves all shed water in the oven. Reduce the filling until a spoon drawn through it leaves a clear track, or the pastry lid will steam from beneath and collapse.
Cool before coveringRanhofer does not say it, but warm filling melts the butter layers in puff paste before the oven can lift them. Chill the filling completely.
"Fragments of puff paste"Thrift, not a special product: the trimmings and rerolled scraps from earlier work, which puff unevenly and were generally reserved for covering rather than for vol-au-vents. Any all-butter puff pastry rolled to about 3 mm works.
Hot ovenRead this as 425 to 450F (220 to 230C). Puff pastry needs the initial blast to set its layers; a moderate oven gives a greasy, flat crust.
Egg wash twiceTwo thin coats, the second after the first has dried to a tack, give the deep lacquer finish expected of the period. Keep the wash off the cut edges or the layers glue shut and will not rise.
YieldThree dozen oysters, a pint of sauce and half a pound of tomatoes fill a deep dish generously; figure six servings as an entrée, four as a main course.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where French technique was applied to American abundance. Oysters were that abundance at its plainest: the beds around New York supplied the city so cheaply through the nineteenth century that oysters appeared in chowders, stuffings, fritters and pies as a matter of routine rather than luxury. The "à la Smith" of the title follows Delmonico's habit of naming dishes for patrons, and in this case the name now points to a person no one can identify with confidence. What is legible is the construction: bacon, onion and tomato reduced into a velouté is a bourgeois French ragoût, and the oysters are folded in at the last moment because Ranhofer knew, as the recipe's ordering makes plain, that they were the one ingredient that could be ruined.