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Coquilles of Eggs and Oysters
Cut six hard-boiled eggs into eight even pieces each. Plunge twelve large very fresh-opened oysters into a pint of boiling water for two minutes. Drain, cut each in half and place them with the eggs. Mix and heat in a small saucepan one tablespoon of butter with two tablespoons flour; then pour in one and a half gills white broth and a gill of cream; mix with a wooden spoon until it comes to a boil, then add eggs and oysters. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; lightly mix and slowly cook for two minutes. Divide the eggs, etc., into six table shells, sprinkle a little grated Parmesan cheese over them, set in the oven to bake for ten minutes, remove and serve.
A creamed egg-and-oyster gratin baked in shells. The measurements are the only real obstacle, and one seasoning quantity is worth reconsidering before you commit.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of broth is 3/4 cup and a gill of cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon.
- The cayenneTwo saltspoons is about half a teaspoon of cayenne in a sauce holding roughly a cup and a quarter of liquid, which will dominate everything else. Start with a pinch and taste.
- White brothAn unsalted, uncoloured veal or chicken stock, made from bones not browned in the oven. Any mild light stock works; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will muddy the sauce.
- Oyster timingTwo minutes in boiling water is enough. Longer and the oysters shrink and turn rubbery, and they still have ten minutes in the oven ahead of them.
- RouxOne tablespoon butter to two tablespoons flour is a dry, flour-heavy roux. Cook it a minute or two before adding liquid so it loses the raw taste, and expect a thick binding sauce rather than a pourable one.
- Table shellsNatural or ceramic scallop shells, sold for gratins; shallow individual ramekins do the same job. Six of them, filled level, is the intended yield.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A hot oven, 400-425F, for ten minutes browns the Parmesan without overcooking the filling, which is already cooked when it goes in. Finish under the broiler if colour is slow.
- ServingSix shells as a first course, or three as a light supper dish with toast.
Coquille is simply the French word for shell, and by the late nineteenth century the shell had become a standard vessel for any bound, creamed mixture browned with cheese or crumbs — coquilles of fish, of chicken, of sweetbreads, of whatever the larder held. The technique is a thrifty one dressed in restaurant clothes: a small quantity of an expensive ingredient is stretched with a sauce and given the dignity of an individual portion. Eggs and oysters were a common pairing in American and Anglo-French cookery of the period, when oysters were cheap and abundant along the Atlantic coast and appeared in soups, patties, stuffings and sauces as a matter of routine rather than luxury.