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Oysters, Porter
Finely chop three ounces fresh halibut or codfish, place in mortar with white of an egg, thoroughly pound to a paste, rub through sieve into a bowl, set bowl on ice, add little by little two tablespoons thick cream, and sharply mix with a wooden spoon while adding. Cut in very small squares a small truffle, add to bowl with a half teaspoon anchovy paste, three saltspoons salt, a saltspoon cayenne, and sharply mix.
Plunge forty-eight freshly opened large oysters in a pint boiling water for three minutes, lift up with a skimmer and drain on a cloth. Split them open, evenly stuff with force, close and place in a sautoire. Add a half ounce butter, half gill white wine, two tablespoons sherry, a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne, cover with a buttered paper, let slowly cook on fire for six minutes, lift up oysters with skimmer and place on a chafing dish. Mix in saucepan a tablespoon each melted butter and flour, pour oyster gravy in this pan with a gill cream, and sharply whisk until it comes to a boil. Dilute an egg yolk with juice of quarter of a sound lemon and tablespoon cream, add to sauce and sharply mix while heating, without boiling, for a minute, strain sauce through a cheesecloth over oysters, shuffle a little and serve.
A grand-hotel oyster dish built on a mousseline forcemeat, a short braise and an egg-yolk liaison. Two things decide whether it works: not overcooking the oysters, and not boiling the finished sauce.
- The liaison must not boilOnce the diluted egg yolk goes in, hold the sauce below a simmer, around 175-180F, stirring for a minute until it thickens. A boil curdles it into grainy threads and no amount of whisking brings it back.
- Oysters and the three minutesThree minutes in boiling water toughens shucked oysters badly. Modern practice is to poach them only until the edges curl, roughly 30 to 60 seconds, which firms them enough to be split and stuffed without making them rubbery. The later six-minute braise adds more cooking still.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of salt is 3/4 teaspoon. A gill is half a cup; half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup.
- Sautoire and buttered paperA sautoire is a straight-sided sauté pan. The recipe's buttered paper functions as a cartouche; whether laid directly on the oysters or over the pan, it keeps them moist under gentle heat.
- The force"Force" is forcemeat. Pounding lean white fish with egg white and cold cream over ice is the classic mousseline method; a food processor does it in seconds, but everything must stay cold or the cream splits out. Rubbing through a sieve after pounding is still worth doing if you want it smooth.
- Truffle and anchovy pasteA small black truffle; preserved truffle in a jar or tin is the practical substitute (and was likely what the original kitchen used), and truffle oil is not. Anchovy paste is still sold in tubes and is salty, so taste before adding the full three saltspoons of salt to the forcemeat.
- Heat levelOne saltspoon of cayenne in the forcemeat plus two in the braising liquid is assertive by current standards. Halving it is reasonable unless you want the dish frankly hot.
- Chafing dish and yieldThe chafing dish is a serving vessel over a spirit lamp, keeping the sauced oysters warm at the table; a warmed shallow dish does the same job. The recipe gives no yield; forty-eight stuffed oysters would plausibly stretch to six or eight as a first course.
The International Cook Book is Alexander Filippini's, and Filippini spent decades in the Delmonico's kitchens in New York, where a dish carrying a surname is often said to have honored a regular customer, a colleague, or a public figure the house wished to flatter. Dozens of such names run through the oyster and fish chapters of the book, and most of the people behind them are now unrecoverable; the specific Porter is not identifiable. What the recipe does show clearly is the reach of French professional technique into American restaurant cooking around 1900: a mousseline forcemeat of pounded white fish, egg white and iced cream, a truffle garnish, a braise under buttered paper, and a finishing liaison of yolk, cream and lemon. Oysters were still cheap and abundant then, the supply by that date coming largely from Long Island Sound and the outer bays as the harbor beds themselves were depleted and increasingly closed, which is why a recipe can call for forty-eight of them without comment and then treat each one as a vessel for something more expensive.