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M. a. T (Take one quart of water one)
Take one quart of water, one teacup of butter; one pint of milk, two teaspoons of salt, four crackers rolled fine, and one teaspoon of pepper; bring to full boiling heat as soon as possible, then add one quart of oysters; let the whole come to boiling heat quickly and remove from the fire.
An oyster stew of the plainest sort, thickened with cracker crumbs rather than flour. The whole thing takes about ten minutes, and the only real skill is knowing when to stop.
- The hinge: pull it off the heat at the boilOysters firm up in roughly a minute and turn to rubber shortly after. The instruction to bring the pot back to boiling heat quickly and remove it at once is the entire technique — the residual heat finishes them as the stew sits.
- A teacup of butterPeriod teacups were not a standardised measure; they are variously reckoned at somewhere between a half and three-quarters of a cup, so perhaps 4 to 6 oz of butter. Either way it is a great deal of fat for this volume, and 4 tablespoons makes a leaner stew.
- A quart of oystersThat is shucked oysters with their liquor, roughly 2 lb, sold today in tubs at a fish counter; the count per quart varies with size. Adding the liquor along with them carries much of the flavour, though the recipe does not say so.
- Four crackers, rolled fineThese are hard water crackers or common soda crackers, not modern saltines, which are smaller and saltier. Four of the old sort would give a fair quantity of fine crumbs, though the exact volume depends on the cracker; taste before adding the full two teaspoons of salt.
- The quart of waterWater plus a pint of milk makes a thin, saline broth. Cooks who want a richer stew substitute milk or half-and-half for some or all of the water; the crumbs will thicken it either way.
- Milk and scorchingA quart of oysters dropped into hot milk will curdle if the pot is on ferocious heat with dry spots on the bottom. Use a heavy pan and stir as it comes up.
- YieldSomething close to three quarts of stew, which will serve considerably more than a handful of people. Serve with more crackers alongside, which is what the crumbs are doing in the pot to begin with.
Oyster stew of this kind was everyday food in nineteenth-century North America rather than a luxury — oysters were dredged in enormous quantities from Chesapeake and Long Island beds and shipped inland by rail in barrels and cans, cheaply enough to appear routinely in community cookbooks. The cracker thickening is the older method, predating the flour-thickened chowders that became more usual later; crumbled hard bread or ship's biscuit had long been used to body out fish broths. The initials in place of a full name are typical of the compiled charity cookbook, whose contributors sent in what they actually cooked.