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Oyster Sauce
Plunge thirty freshly opened Bluepoint oysters into a saucepan with their liquor and one gill cold water; place on the fire, and as soon as it comes to a boil skim the scum from the surface. Mix in another saucepan two tablespoons melted butter with two tablespoons flour; strain the broth of the oysters into this saucepan and add one gill cold milk. Season with half teaspoon salt and a saltspoon cayenne pepper. Mix well with a whisk for one minute, and as soon as it boils add the oysters. Boil for two minutes and the sauce is ready for use.
A straightforward oyster velouté thickened with a butter-and-flour roux and loosened with the oysters' own liquor. The measures are Edwardian but the method needs almost no adjustment.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. The recipe uses two: one of water to poach the oysters, one of cold milk in the sauce.
- A saltspoonRoughly a quarter teaspoon. That is a great deal of cayenne for two cups of sauce; an eighth of a teaspoon is closer to modern taste, and you can add more at the end.
- Thirty BluepointsBluepoint originally meant oysters from Blue Point, Long Island; by the turn of the century the name was being used loosely in the trade for medium Atlantic oysters generally. Thirty shucked oysters is roughly a pint, depending on grade — about two 8 oz containers of shucked oysters with their liquor.
- "Two tablespoons melted butter"This is simply the instruction to melt the butter before whisking in the flour — an equal-parts roux. Cook it a minute before adding liquid so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- Salt with careOyster liquor is already saline and varies a lot by oyster. Hold back the half teaspoon of salt until the sauce is assembled, then season.
- The two minutes are the pointOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle. The brief initial boil plus two minutes in the finished sauce is about the outer limit; longer and they shrink and turn rubbery. Off the heat as soon as they plump.
- SkimmingThe grey scum that rises when oysters first heat is coagulated protein and grit. Skim it and strain the broth as directed — this is what keeps the sauce pale and clean-tasting.
- Yield and useAbout two cups. It was meant to be spooned over poached or boiled fish, boiled fowl, or a turkey; it also works as the sauce for a vol-au-vent or over toast.
Oyster sauce in the English and American sense has nothing to do with the fermented Cantonese condiment of the same name; it is a white sauce built on the liquor of the oysters themselves, and by the nineteenth century it was the near-automatic accompaniment to boiled cod and to roast or boiled turkey on both sides of the Atlantic. Its ubiquity reflects how cheap oysters were: the beds of Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake supplied Northeastern cities in enormous quantity, and cheap shucked oysters were widely available alongside more expensive oysters sold in the shell, before overharvesting and pollution thinned the beds in the early twentieth century. The Bluepoint name, taken from Blue Point on Long Island's Great South Bay, had already become a general trade term for a medium-sized Atlantic oyster by the time this book was compiled — New York State eventually legislated on who could use it.