No. 2519

Garnishing of Oysters in Croustades

Garniture d'Huitres en Croustades

Drain and wipe some large blanched oysters; remove the muscle part and replace it by a round piece of lobster cut the same size. Make some small oval fine foundation paste croustades; cover the insides with buttered paper, fill with rice, bake and empty; fill them halfway up with cooked mushrooms, cut in three-sixteenths of an inch squares, mingled with a little well-seasoned blond chaudfroid, made by mixing a little brown chaudfroid (No. 594) with white chaudfroid (No. 596), and over these lay the oysters; put in a layer of half-set jelly, applying it with a brush, and decorate each croustade with chervil leaves; cover with more jelly.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a garnish from the cold-buffet chapter of Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), meant to ring a platter of cold fish or a decorated galantine rather than to be served alone. The whole thing succeeds or fails on the jelly: it must be at the point of setting, syrupy and barely flowing, or it will either run off or seize into lumps on the brush.

Blanch, do not cook"Blanched" oysters here means poached very briefly, only until the edges ruffle, then lifted out; the recipe does not say in what liquid or for how long. Anything longer and they shrink and turn to rubber, which is fatal in a garnish where each oyster must still read as an oyster.
The muscle partThis is the adductor muscle, the pale tough plug that held the oyster to its shell. Ranhofer says only to remove it and plug the gap with a round piece of cooked lobster cut the same size, which gives the finished piece a spot of red against the grey.
Foundation pastePâte à foncer, a firm short lining paste of flour, butter, a little egg and water, not puff pastry. Roll it thin, line small oval moulds or barquette tins, line those with buttered paper and fill with rice as written, and bake until set and lightly coloured; the recipe gives no temperature, so a moderately hot oven (around 400F) is a modern equivalent. The rice is a blind-baking weight and is discarded.
ChaudfroidA sauce bound with aspic that sets to a coating consistency: brown chaudfroid is reduced espagnole with jelly, white is velouté or béchamel with jelly and cream. Mixing the two gives the "blond" tone Ranhofer wants. Any modern chaudfroid or a well-reduced sauce stiffened with bloomed gelatine will behave the same way.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm. This is a small brunoise of cooked mushroom, not a mince; the cubes should still be visible through the pale sauce.
Half-set jellyClear aspic cooled to the consistency of raw egg white. Brush on a thin coat, chill until firm, then flood with a second coat after the chervil is placed, or the leaves will float and drift.
Chervil leavesBlanch the pluches briefly and dry them; raw chervil tends to brown under jelly. Flat-leaf parsley or tarragon tips can be substituted if chervil is unavailable.
Yield and handlingThe recipe specifies no quantity, so scale to your platter. Because the oysters are only briefly blanched and the aspic will soften, assemble cold, keep refrigerated until the moment of service, and keep time at room temperature to a minimum.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean is essentially the restaurant's working archive: some 3,500 numbered entries with cross-references, of which whole chapters concern nothing but the decoration of cold dishes for buffets and banquet services à la russe. Garnishes like this belong to the grand era of chaudfroid work, when a cold salmon or a ham in aspic arrived at table ringed with dozens of identical small constructions, each one a miniature of the main piece's technique. The word croustade simply means a crust used as a container, and the blind-baking with rice that Ranhofer describes is the same trick still used for tart shells. Oysters were then cheap and abundant in New York waters, plentiful enough to be treated as a decorative material rather than a luxury, which is much of why a garnish calls for large ones by the dozen and thinks nothing of cutting the muscle out of each and throwing it away.