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Oyster Stew
Procure thirty-six medium Bluepoint oysters. Open and place them in a saucepan with their liquor and one pint cold water; add one pint extra oyster liquor; season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Set the pan on the fire and just let come to a boil. Skim the scum from the surface, then add three gills hot milk and half ounce butter; lightly mix, and as soon as it comes to a boil serve.
A plain oyster stew of the old oyster-bar type, thin and briny rather than creamy. Everything depends on not overcooking the oysters.
- The hinge: barely cook themOysters firm up in under two minutes and turn rubbery soon after. The recipe's "just let come to a boil" is literal — the moment the surface trembles and the edges of the oysters ruffle, they are done.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so three gills of hot milk is 1½ cups. Warm it before adding; cold milk dropped into hot oyster liquor drops the temperature and tempts you to boil the pot longer.
- A pint of extra oyster liquorThirty-six oysters yield perhaps a cup of their own liquor, nowhere near a second pint. Fishmongers selling shucked oysters will often sell the liquor, and bottled clam juice is the usual modern stand-in; failing that, use more water and expect a milder stew.
- BluepointsBluepoint originally meant oysters from Great South Bay on Long Island; the name is now used loosely for almost any mild Atlantic cup oyster. Any medium briny oyster works — roughly a pint and a half to two pints shucked, or two dozen if yours are large.
- Salt with restraintThe teaspoon of salt goes into liquid that is already half oyster liquor. Oyster liquor and bottled clam juice are saline in themselves; season at the end, after the milk goes in.
- The scumThe grey foam that rises before the boil is coagulated oyster protein. Skimming it is not fussiness; it keeps the finished stew clearer.
- GritEven shucked oysters carry shell fragments. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter before it goes in the pan.
- YieldAbout two quarts, serving four as a main course or six as a first course. Serve at once in warmed bowls with oyster crackers or plain soda crackers; it does not hold or reheat.
Oyster stew of this kind belongs to the American oyster-saloon tradition of the nineteenth century, when oysters were cheap urban food and cellar bars in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia sold them raw, roasted, fried and stewed by the plate. The formula here — liquor, water, a little milk, butter, white pepper — is the older, thinner style; the richer cream stew now associated with Christmas Eve tables is a later development, though the reasons for the shift are not so easily pinned on the price of oysters. Bluepoints took their name from the beds around Blue Point on Long Island's Great South Bay, and the term was applied so freely by dealers that New York State legislated over its use. Filippini's book, written by a Delmonico's man for a broad American readership, treats them as the default oyster the way a modern writer might simply say "medium oysters."