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Oyster Stew, Francaise
Open thirty-six medium, fresh oysters, place in a stew pan with their liquor and one gill white wine, pint and a half of water, four branches celery, two branches chervil, light teaspoon salt, and three saltspoons white pepper. Set the pan on the fire, let come to a boil, skim scum from the surface, add a pint hot milk, boil two minutes more, remove the celery and chervil, skim off scum again. Pour the stew into a soup tureen and serve with six slices of toasted French bread.
A thin, wine-sharpened oyster stew in the French manner rather than the cream-heavy American kind. Almost everything hinges on how briefly the oysters see heat.
- Watch the oysters, not the clockOysters firm up and turn rubbery within a minute or two of boiling. The original starts them cold, in the pan with their liquor, and then boils twice; if you want them tender, hold them back and add them once the liquid is hot, letting them go only until the edges ruffle at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. Use a dry white with some acidity; the recipe relies on it to cut the milk.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of white pepper. That is assertive; white pepper is the usual choice here, presumably so the stew stays pale.
- Thirty-six oystersSix per person, which places this as a first course for six. Shucked oysters sold by the pint run roughly 20 to 30 depending on size, so about a pint and a half of shucked meats with their liquor.
- Strain the liquorThe original assumes you are shucking to order. Bottled or tubbed oysters carry shell grit; pour the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes in the pan.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. It is delicate and anise-scented, closer to tarragon than parsley; flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves is the usual substitute. It is removed before serving, so whole stems are fine.
- The milkHeat the milk separately and add it hot, as written. Cold milk dropped into the hot, wine-acidulated broth is more likely to curdle. The original does call for two minutes' boiling after the milk goes in; a gentle simmer is safer against splitting.
- The breadToast dries the crumb so it holds up in the broth. Cut the slices thick, toast them well, and put them in the bowls rather than the tureen so they do not disintegrate.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and this stew is of a piece with that kind of room: the American oyster, which was cheap and everywhere in the period, treated by a French cook with white wine, celery and chervil instead of the butter-and-cream treatment of the oyster saloons and railway lunch counters. The recipe also tells you something about how oysters reached the kitchen: they arrive unopened, they are shucked in the kitchen, and their liquor is treated as a valuable part of the broth rather than something to be drained away.