No. 699

Oyster Garnishing for Shells and for a Patties with Mushrooms

Garniture d'Huitres pour Coquilles et pour Bouchees aux Champignons

The first step to take is to open the oysters, detach them from their shells, and poach them in their own juice, after this is done, drain them off. They can be bread-crumbed and baked in their own shells if needed whole, or in small scollop shells if they are in salpicon (No. 165), or else they are used to garnish bouchees. To prepare them for the patties proceed as follows: Blanch thirty-two medium sized oysters in their own juice in a saucepan, drain and dry them on a napkin. Fry a finely chopped shallot in two ounces of butter, moisten with the oyster juice, add a pint of bechamel sauce (No. 409), reduce and then strain the whole through a tammy (No. 159), cut the oysters into small squares and fry them in two ounces of butter over a brisk fire, and add them to the prepared bechamel, also two tablespoonfuls of chopped mushrooms.

← No. 698 Oysters, Mussels or Milts a la Villeroi Garn Garnishings No. 700 Palate of Beef Garnishing a la Mancelle in C →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing a filling rather than a finished dish: oysters bound in a reduced béchamel, meant to go into shells or puff-pastry cases. The cross-referenced numbers point to other entries in The Epicurean, which you will need to supply from a modern equivalent.

The hinge: barely cook the oysters"Poach" and "blanch" here mean bringing them up in their own liquor only until the edges ruffle, well under two minutes. They are then cut up and briefly tossed in butter and heated again in the sauce, so any real simmering at the first stage will leave them rubbery.
Béchamel, No. 409Béchamel, No. 409 — a butter-and-flour roux cooked out with milk; nineteenth-century béchamels of this kind were commonly enriched with veal stock and flavored with onion, nutmeg and bay, then strained, though No. 409 itself is not reproduced here. A pint of any well-made, fairly thick béchamel will do; it must be stiff enough to hold in a pastry case after you add the oyster liquor.
Tammy, No. 159A tammy is a worsted or fine-woven cloth through which sauce was forced, often twisted between two people. A fine chinois or a doubled square of muslin gives the same result with less drama.
Salpicon, No. 165A salpicon is a mixture of ingredients cut into small uniform dice and bound with a sauce – here the diced oysters in béchamel.
BouchéesSmall round puff-pastry cases, roughly bite-to-two-bite size, baked blind and hollowed. Modern vol-au-vent shells or good frozen puff pastry cut with a fluted cutter serve the purpose; fill them at the last moment or the pastry softens.
The mushroomsTwo tablespoons of chopped mushrooms added raw to a reduced sauce will thin it and taste of nothing much. Sweat them in butter first and let their water go off before they join the béchamel.
Reduce, then measureThe oyster liquor is salty and reduces further with the sauce, so hold back salt until the reduction is finished. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve first - shell grit is the usual fault in oyster fillings.
YieldThirty-two medium oysters with a pint of béchamel should fill roughly 24 to 30 small bouchées, or eight to ten scallop shells; the figures are an estimate, as Ranhofer gives none.
Breadcrumbed in the shellFor the whole-oyster version, the poached oysters go back into cleaned deep shells and are crumbed and baked only long enough to color the crumbs. Ranhofer gives no temperature or time; a hot oven, in the region of 425F for five to seven minutes, answers. Longer and the oysters shrink and weep.

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 entry sits in the garnishings section precisely because a nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen thought in components: a bound oyster salpicon that could be sent out in scallop shells, spooned into bouchées, or used to fill a larger pastry case depending on the order. Oysters were then among the cheapest things in New York - the harbor beds and the Chesapeake trade supplied them by the barrel, and oyster cellars and stands were everywhere - so their appearance in an elaborate French-service garnish reflects abundance rather than luxury. The technique of blanching shellfish in its own liquor and then using that liquor to moisten the sauce is standard classical practice, and the béchamel-plus-shallot base is essentially what later cooks would call a sauce for coquilles; the numbered cross-references throughout the book are Ranhofer's own system, meaning almost no recipe in it can be cooked from a single page.