No. 839

Attereaux of Oysters

Attereaux d'Huitres

Blanch medium-sized oysters; drain, wipe and run small wooden skewers through them, alternating each oyster with a slice of mushroom; cover with a Villeroi sauce (No. 560), let get cold, and then roll them in bread-crumbs, and dip in beaten eggs; bread-crumb again, smooth the breading, and fry the attereaux into hot frying fat, drain and replace the wooden skewers by metal ones, and finish by dressing them pyramidically on a napkin with fried parsley on top.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you have his sauce Villeroi on hand and a deep kettle of fat already at temperature. The whole dish hinges on that sauce setting hard enough to hold a shape.

The hinge: the Villeroi must be very thick and fully coldSauce Villeroi is in essence a reduced allemande, a velouté finished with egg yolks and cream and cooked down until it coats a spoon heavily; Ranhofer's own version is at No. 560. Dip the skewers, lay them on an oiled tray and chill until firm, at least an hour; if the coating is still soft it will slide off in the breading and burst in the fat.
Blanching oystersBring the oysters just to the point where the edges ruffle, 30 seconds or so in their own liquor, then lift them out. Anything longer and they shrink and toughen, and they still have the frying to come.
Wipe them dryBlotted-dry oysters are not fussiness here — surface moisture keeps the sauce from clinging and makes the coating steam off in the fryer.
Frying fat and temperatureThe period fat would be lard or clarified beef suet; any neutral oil works. Hold it at 360–375°F and fry in small batches — a minute to a minute and a half is enough to colour the crumbs, since everything inside is already cooked.
Double breadingCrumb, egg, crumb again, then press the surface smooth with the flat of a knife. The second coat is what seals the sauce; a gap in it lets the filling escape.
Why the skewers get swappedWooden skewers were cheap and disposable for the frying; the polished silver or steel hâtelets that replaced them at the table were serving hardware, often ornamented at the top. Modern bamboo skewers fry perfectly well, and there is no reason to change them unless you own the metal ones.
MushroomsCultivated white or cremini caps, sliced about 1/8 inch and lightly cooked first, stand in for the tinned or fresh button mushrooms Ranhofer used. Raw slices release water into the sauce.
Fried parsleyFlat or curly parsley, bone dry, dropped into the fat for five to ten seconds until it stops sputtering and turns brilliant green. Wet parsley will spit violently.
Yield and serviceThe recipe specifies neither. Two oysters per skewer and three or four skewers a person is a reasonable portion for a hot side dish. The napkin is a folded linen serviette on the platter to absorb fat and keep the pyramid from sliding.

A Little History

Attereaux — a cognate of hâtelet, the ornamental skewer, both descending from Old French hastereau/hâte, a spit — are a fixture of nineteenth-century French service: small items threaded on a spit, masked in a stiff sauce, breaded and fried, then stood upright on a platter as a hot entremets or side dish. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, gives a whole run of them in The Epicurean (1894), from fat livers to Piedmontese, and the oyster version belongs squarely to the American end of his repertoire: oysters were abundant and cheap in New York harbour through the 1890s, and they turn up throughout Ranhofer's book. The sauce is generally credited to the Villeroy family of French marshals, and by Carême's time à la Villeroi is often said to have already meant this specific technique of coating something in a set, reduced velouté before crumbing it. The dish is a good measure of what a brigade kitchen could take for granted — a mother sauce made that morning, a fat kettle at heat, and a drawer of silver skewers kept only for the dining room.