No. 803

Raw Oysters on the half Sheel or Little Neck Clams

Huitres Crues sur Coquilles ou Lucines Orangees

Open the oysters carefully by inserting the blade of the knife between the shells and prying them open so as to avoid breaking and leave them in their deep shells with the liquor. Serve six or eight according to their size with a quarter of a lemon for each guest. Crackers or slices of very thin bread and butter can be served at the same time. The clams are to be treated exactly the same. A hot sauce or a shallot sauce made with finely chopped shallots fixed with salt, pepper and vinegar, or else a pimentade sauce (No. 521), can also be eaten with the oysters. They should only be opened when ready to serve and sent to the table on finely broken ice.

← No. 802 Pickled Oysters Cold Side Dishes No. 804 Oysters Tartare →

For the Modern Kitchen

Barely a recipe, more a service standard from a restaurant that sold oysters by the thousand. The details that matter are timing, temperature and what the accompanying sauces actually are.

Open at the last momentThis is the hinge of the whole entry. An oyster shucked in advance loses its liquor and warms up; shuck to order, keep the deep shell level, and get it onto ice immediately.
BuyingUse live shellfish from a dealer who can supply the harvest tag, kept cold and never sealed in an airtight bag. Discard any that gape and will not close when tapped, and any that are light or rattle. Raw oysters are not advisable for pregnant women, young children, or anyone immunocompromised or with liver disease.
Lucines orangéesLucines orangées -- Ranhofer's French rendering for the hard-shell clam sold in New York as a little neck; the book's own English title equates the two. The little neck is the smallest market grade of Mercenaria mercenaria, around two inches across.
Shallot sauceFinely chopped shallots with salt, pepper and vinegar is what is now called mignonette. Red wine vinegar is usual; let it stand fifteen minutes so the shallot loses its raw edge, and spoon on sparingly.
"A hot sauce"Ambiguous here; it may mean a piquant sauce rather than a bottled pepper sauce in the modern sense. The cross-reference is to the book's own pimentade at No. 521. A plain lemon quarter is closer to how the dish is served now.
The ice"Finely broken ice" means crushed, packed level and deep enough that the shells sit steady without tipping and spilling their liquor.
YieldSix to eight per person is a first course at Delmonico's scale. A modern portion is six, or a dozen if the oysters are small and nothing much follows.
Bread and butterThe recipe offers crackers or very thin bread and butter; thin bread and butter is the more usual partner. Cut the bread thin enough to fold.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and among the dishes it records are raw oysters. Nineteenth-century New York sat on enormous natural beds, and oysters were cheap street food as well as restaurant fare; the city's cellars and stands shifted them by the barrel until pollution and overharvesting closed most of the beds in the early twentieth century. What Ranhofer records here is the fine-dining register of that trade: the deep shell kept intact, the liquor saved, the ice crushed rather than cubed, and a choice of sharp sauces of which the chopped-shallot vinegar has outlived the rest under the name mignonette. The French title's Lucines orange mfor