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Oyster Coquilles with Celery
Cut a well-trimmed and cleaned stalk of fine, crisp white celery into quarter-inch square pieces and boil in a pint of water with half teaspoon salt for thirty-five minutes. Thoroughly drain, and keep one and a half gills of the celery broth. Mix in a saucepan one tablespoon butter with two tablespoons flour; briskly stir while heating for one minute; pour in the one and a half gills celery broth, adding one gill cream. Season with half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons paprika and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well and let gently simmer for twenty minutes. Plunge twenty-four large, fresh-opened oysters with their liquor into a half pint water and boil for five minutes. Drain, add the oysters and celery to the sauce, with a half gill of the liquor; lightly mix, then evenly divide the preparation in six table shells. Sprinkle over them two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, place the shells on a tin, then set in the oven for ten minutes or till of a nice golden colour. Remove and serve. N. B. Unless otherwise mentioned, a tablespoon flour means about a "level," not a "heaping," tablespoonful.
A creamed oyster gratin from the era when celery was a luxury vegetable served in its own glassware. The measurements are in gills and saltspoons, and the oyster timing needs rethinking.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a gill and a half of celery broth is 3/4 cup, one gill of cream is 1/2 cup, and the half gill of oyster liquor is 1/4 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, so two saltspoons of paprika is roughly 1/2 teaspoon.
- Do not boil the oysters five minutesThis is the hinge. Oysters are done the moment their edges ruffle, about one to two minutes in barely simmering liquid; five minutes at a boil shrinks them to rubber, and they then get ten more minutes in the oven. Poach them just until plump, reserve the liquor, and let the oven do the rest.
- The celeryThirty-five minutes is very long by modern standards. Modern celery, cut in quarter-inch dice, is tender in ten to fifteen minutes. If you cut the boiling short you will have less concentrated broth, so reduce it or supplement with a little chicken stock to reach 3/4 cup.
- "A stalk of celery"In older usage this can mean the whole head rather than a single rib, though the recipe does not make it certain. Reckon on about two cups of diced celery, inner ribs preferred for crispness and pale colour.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was usual for the period. Use 425F so the Parmesan colours in ten minutes without the cream sauce breaking; a run under the broiler at the end will finish the top if it is still pale.
- Table shellsThese are the deep scallop-shaped dishes, natural or china, sold for baked seafood; individual ramekins of about 1/2 cup capacity work identically. Set them on a sheet pan as directed, since they tip easily and the sauce boils over.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon butter to two level tablespoons flour is a lean, flour-heavy roux. Twenty minutes of gentle simmering will thicken it considerably and it may need thinning with a little extra cream or broth before the oysters go in, or the finished dish will be pasty.
- YieldSix shells, four oysters each, as a first course. Serve immediately; reheated oyster gratin toughens.
Coquille is simply French for shell, and by the 1900s any creamed seafood browned in a shell was called a coquille on English-language menus. This book belongs to the great age of American oyster cookery, when oysters were cheap enough to be everyday food in eastern cities and cookbooks ran dozens of preparations for them; celery, by contrast, was still something of a status vegetable, grown in blanched trenches, sold by the head and set out in cut-glass vases as a course in itself. Pairing the two in a cream sauce under Parmesan is a hotel-dining-room gesture of the period. The closing note about level rather than heaping tablespoons suggests a moment when standardized measurement was still new enough to need spelling out.