Home › The World's Kitchen › Oysters in Cases, Mornay
Oysters in Cases, Mornay
Rub outsides of six paper cases with a little oil, place on a plate and keep at oven door until required. Mix in a saucepan an ounce butter with one and a half ounces flour and heat for a half minute. Pour in two gills hot milk, a half gill cream two tablespoons sherry, season with a half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne, a saltspoon nutmeg, sharply mix until it comes to a boil and let slowly cook for six minutes. Add two tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese and one egg yolk, sharply mix for a minute and keep hot. Plunge thirty-six freshly opened oysters with their liquor in a pint boiling water with teaspoon salt and boil for five minutes. Drain on a sieve and add to sauce, mix well, then equally divide oysters and sauce into the six cases. Sprinkle over a little grated Parmesan cheese, place cases on a roasting tin, set in oven for ten minutes, remove, dress on dish with a napkin and serve.
A Mornay sauce built on a heavy roux, spooned into paper cases and glazed. The proportions still work; the oyster cooking time does not.
- The oystersFive minutes in boiling water will shrink thirty-six oysters into rubber. Poach them just until the edges ruffle, well under a minute, or skip the boil and let the ten minutes in the oven finish them in the sauce.
- Don't throw out the liquorThe recipe boils the oysters in salted water and drains everything away. The liquor is the best-flavoured thing in the dish; strain it and reduce a spoonful or two into the sauce instead of adding the full teaspoon of salt.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of milk is one cup and a half gill of cream is a quarter cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the cayenne half a teaspoon, which is assertive; start with half that.
- The egg yolkOnce the yolk goes in the sauce must not boil again or it will curdle. Pull the pan off the heat, beat the yolk in hard, and keep the sauce warm rather than simmering.
- Roux ratioAn ounce of butter to an ounce and a half of flour is flour-heavy by modern habit and gives a very stiff sauce, which is what you want if it is to sit in a paper case. If it tightens past spoonable, loosen with a little more hot milk.
- Paper casesThese were stiff pleated paper cups. Small ramekins, scallop shells or ovenproof gratin dishes do the same job; oiling the outside of a paper case was presumably to stop it scorching, and would be unnecessary with ceramic.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Ten minutes to heat through and brown the cheese means a hot oven, around 425F, or finish under the broiler for two or three minutes.
- Yield and serviceSix cases, six oysters each: a first course for six. The folded napkin on the serving dish is a conventional service touch of the period and does steady the cases, so it is worth keeping.
Mornay is the standard béchamel enriched with cheese, usually Gruyère or Parmesan, and often a yolk; the name is traditionally attached to the Mornay family of the French court but the sauce as codified belongs to nineteenth-century restaurant kitchens rather than to any documented inventor. Serving it in individual paper cases was a hotel and restaurant convention of the period, a way of portioning a rich sauce so it arrived hot and browned without a serving spoon breaking the glaze. The oysters here — thirty-six of them feeding six people as a starter — serve as a vehicle for the sauce rather than as the point of the dish.