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Oyster Pot Pie
Place thirty-six good-sized, freshly opened oysters with their liquor and two gills water in a saucepan. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper and boil for five minutes. Heat in another saucepan two tablespoons melted butter, add three tablespoons flour, briskly stir, then pour in two gills of oyster broth and two gills hot milk. Season with half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; thoroughly mix, then boil for five minutes. Drain the oysters on a sieve and add to the same; stir briskly, then shift the pan on the corner of the range. Cut two ounces very lean bacon into quarter-of-an-inch-square pieces and fry in a small frying pan with a teaspoon butter for five minutes; drain and add to the oysters. Mix well, then boil for one minute. Pour the whole into a deep baking dish. Roll out on a lightly floured table a quarter pound of pie paste, exceedingly thin. Egg the edges of the pie dish, then cover the dish with the paste. Carefully press the paste all around the edges, trim well; make four very small incisions on top of the paste, lightly egg the surface, then set the dish in a moderate oven to bake for fifteen minutes, or until a nice golden colour. Remove and serve.
A straightforward creamed-oyster pie, but the timings belong to an era when oysters were cheap and cooks were not squeamish about firmness. Cut the cooking down and the dish improves considerably.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which makes the cayenne and nutmeg quantities modest rather than alarming.
- The oysters are cooked three times overThe oysters are cooked repeatedly -- As written they boil five minutes, then go into the sauce, then boil a minute more, then spend fifteen minutes in the oven. Oysters need only to plump and ruffle at the edges, about one to two minutes. Poach them just until the edges curl, lift them out, and reserve the liquor for the sauce.
- QuantityThirty-six good-sized oysters is roughly a quart of shucked oysters with their liquor, enough for four to six as a main course. Buy them shucked in the container if you are not opening shells yourself, and strain the liquor to catch grit.
- Oven heat'Moderate oven' conventionally means somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no figure; a very thin top crust may not take much colour in fifteen minutes at that heat. A hotter oven, 400 to 425F, will set and brown the pastry faster.
- "The corner of the range"On a coal range the corner was the coolest spot, used to hold something at a bare simmer. Move the pan off direct heat, or set the burner to its lowest setting.
- The sauceTwo tablespoons butter to three of flour is a stiff roux, but three tablespoons of flour to one cup of oyster broth and one cup of milk gives a fairly light sauce rather than a thick one. Cook the flour a minute before adding liquid to lose the raw taste.
- Pie paste and egg washA quarter pound of pastry is about 4 oz, enough for a single top crust on a deep dish roughly 8 by 8 inches. Brushing egg on the dish rim is what glues the pastry down; do not skip it, and keep the four vents open so steam escapes rather than lifting the crust.
- BaconTwo ounces of very lean bacon, diced small, means a leaner cut than streaky supermarket bacon. Render it slowly, drain well, and add it at the end so it keeps some bite.
Oyster pot pie belongs to the long American period when oysters were the cheapest protein on the eastern seaboard, sold by the barrel and eaten by everyone, and cooks needed a dozen ways to stretch them into a hot supper dish. The construction here is French rather than folksy: a butter-and-flour sauce enriched with milk as well as broth, cayenne and nutmeg for warmth, lardons of lean bacon for depth, and a single thin top crust in the manner of a deep-dish pie rather than a lined pastry case. It is classical technique applied to whatever the American market supplied in abundance.