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Croute of Oysters, Fin De Siecle
Cut covers from six long-shaped rolls (fluttes), scoop out soft part, lightly butter interiors, place on a plate with covers and keep at oven door until required.
Plunge thirty-six large, freshly opened oysters with their liquor into a pint boiling water with a teaspoon salt and boil for five minutes. Finely chop a seeded green pepper, four sound shallots and six well washed and drained fresh mushrooms. Place the three articles in a saucepan with an ounce good butter and gently cook for six minutes, slightly stirring meanwhile. Strew in two light tablespoons flour, stir well while cooking for a minute, strain a gill of the oyster broth into pan and add three gills milk. Season with a half teaspoon salt, saltspoon cayenne and half saltspoon grated nutmeg, briskly mix until it comes to a boil, then let reduce to half the quantity on an open fire, frequently mixing meanwhile. Strain oysters on sieve and add them to sauce, with a tablespoon each thick cream and sherry, and gently mix while cooking for one minute. Place rolls on a dish, evenly pour oysters, etc., into them, place covers on and serve.
A late-Victorian oyster ragout served in hollowed bread rolls, from a period when "fin de siècle" on a menu meant simply up-to-date. The method is sound apart from one timing that modern cooks should ignore.
- The five-minute boilOysters held at a boil for five minutes shrink and turn to rubber. Bring the salted water and their liquor to a simmer, slip the oysters in, and lift them out as soon as the edges ruffle — under a minute. Reserve the broth, which is what the sauce actually needs from them.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a gill of oyster broth is 1/2 cup and three gills of milk is 1 1/2 cups. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne assertive and the nutmeg a bare pinch.
- FluttesThese are flûtes — slim, short baguettes. Six long crusty rolls or a baguette cut into six lengths will do; slice off a lid, pull out the crumb, leaving a shell about a half inch thick.
- Crisping the shells"Keep at oven door" is simply an instruction to keep the buttered shells warm until wanted; no temperature is given. If you want the crumb dried so it holds up under the sauce, a low oven for a few minutes will do the same job.
- Reduce, then finishThe sauce is taken to half volume over a brisk fire, which leaves it thick enough to sit in the bread. Reduce before the oysters go in, as the recipe directs, and treat the cream and sherry as a brief finish.
- Thirty-six oystersRoughly three cups of shucked oysters. Buy them shucked in their liquor if you are not opening them yourself — the liquor is an ingredient here, not a byproduct.
- Shallots and mushrooms"Sound" here means unblemished. Cook the pepper, shallot and mushroom until the mushroom liquid has gone, or the finished sauce will thin out.
- YieldSix filled rolls, one per person as a first course or a light lunch. Assemble and serve at once; the shells soften within a few minutes.
Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book with dishes named for the fashions and personalities of his day, and "fin de siècle" — French for "end of the century" — was a fashionable tag of the turn of the century. The dish itself is a croustade in the plain sense: a creamed filling served in a hollowed bread case. Oysters were cheap and abundant on the American Atlantic coast through the nineteenth century, which is why restaurant books of this period can call for three dozen without comment and why oyster stews, pan roasts and patties turn up on menus at every price.