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Stewed Oysters (II)
Mrs. T. McMish.
Drain the liquor from two quarts of firm, plump oysters, mix with it a small teacup of hot water, add a little salt and pepper, and set over the fire in a sauce-pan, When it boils, add a large cupful of rich milk. Let it boil up once, add the oysters, let them boil five minutes. When they ruffle, add two tablespoons butter, and the instant it is melted, and well stirred in, take off the fire.
A plain nineteenth-century oyster stew: liquor and milk as the base, oysters in at the last moment. The only real decision in it is when to stop cooking.
- The hinge: watch for the ruffle, not the clockThe recipe says five minutes, then says "when they ruffle" — the second instruction is the reliable one. Shucked oysters plump and their edges curl within about two minutes in simmering liquid; five minutes will shrink them and turn them rubbery. Pull the pan the moment the frills lift.
- Two quarts of oystersThis means shucked oysters in their liquor, sold today in pint or quart tubs — on modern packing, two quarts is on the order of 4 lb of meats, or roughly 6 dozen mediums. If you are shucking your own, you will need a good deal more than that in the shell.
- Strain the liquorOyster liquor almost always carries shell grit and sand. Pour it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes in the pan, since nothing later in the recipe removes it.
- "A small teacup" and "a large cupful"Victorian teacups generally ran smaller than a modern measuring cup; read the water as something under a cup — perhaps 4 to 6 oz — and the milk as a generous 8 oz. The proportions are forgiving — this is a thin, brothy stew rather than a chowder.
- "Rich milk"Nineteenth-century milk was unhomogenised and came with cream on top. Use whole milk, or half milk and half cream, for the body the original assumes.
- Keep the milk below a hard boil"Let it boil up once" is as far as it should go. Salt and prolonged heat will curdle milk, and a sustained rolling boil risks it here; bring it just to the point of shivering and add the oysters.
- Butter last, off the heatTwo tablespoons stirred in as the pan comes off the fire enriches the broth without breaking it. If the butter boils in the stew it will separate into slicks.
- Yield and servingServes about six as a first course, four as a supper. Oyster crackers or dry toast are the usual accompaniment.
Stewed oysters were everyday food in North American cities through the nineteenth century, not a luxury: rail and barrel shipping from the Chesapeake and elsewhere put cheap shucked oysters in inland markets, and a household compilation like The Home Cook Book — assembled from contributions by named local women, here Mrs. T. McMish — typically carried several competing versions of a dish. The milk-based stew is the plainest of the family, a cousin of the oyster soups and scallops that fill the same chapters, and its whole technique rests on the cook's eye: "when they ruffle" is the doneness cue the recipe itself relies on. Oyster stew's association with Christmas Eve and Lenten suppers in parts of the United States is often linked to Catholic immigrant communities of this era, when a meatless meal still had to feel like an occasion.