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Oysters, Printaniere
Carefully open thirty-six large, fresh oysters and keep in their deep shells with the liquor, then arrange them on a roasting tin and season with a half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons paprika evenly divided. Prepare green butter equally divide it in small bits over oysters, sprinkle a little bread crumbs on top, then set in brisk oven for twelve minutes. Remove, dress on a hot dish, decorate with six quarters lemon and a little parsley greens. If there be any liquor at bottom of pan take it up with a spoon, pour it over oysters and serve.
A half-shell bake that stands or falls on timing: thirty-six oysters, herb butter, crumbs, high heat. Most of the work is in the shucking.
- The hinge: twelve minutes is too longThe hinge: twelve minutes may be longer than needed -- in a hot oven, oysters on the half shell can be done in something nearer five to eight minutes, as soon as the edges ruffle and the crumbs colour. Overcooked they shrink and turn chewy; watch the tray rather than the clock.
- "Brisk oven"Brisk means hot; period usage puts it somewhere around 400-450F, though the book gives no temperatures of its own. Preheat fully, and use the upper third of the oven so the crumbs brown before the oysters overcook. A minute under the broiler at the end does the same job more reliably.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of paprika, divided among all thirty-six shells. With the half teaspoon of salt, that is a light seasoning by design; the oyster liquor is already salty.
- Green butterBeurre vert: softened butter worked with blanched, squeezed and finely chopped green herbs, commonly parsley with tarragon or chervil, sometimes spinach for colour, plus lemon and a little pepper. The recipe assumes the cook already knows the preparation and gives no quantity; any herb butter of that type serves, and something in the region of a few ounces will cover thirty-six oysters.
- Keeping the shells uprightLine the roasting tin with a bed of coarse rock salt or crumpled foil and settle each deep shell into it. Otherwise the shells tip and the liquor, which is half the seasoning, runs into the pan.
- The liquor at the bottomThe final instruction is not decoration. The pan juices are concentrated oyster liquor and melted herb butter; spoon them back over the shells the moment the tray comes out, before they cool and separate.
- Buying and shuckingUse oysters bought live in the shell, closed or closing when tapped, and shuck them yourself; pre-shucked tub oysters have lost the liquor and the deep shell the dish needs. Discard any that gape and will not shut.
- YieldSix lemon quarters is the clue: thirty-six oysters serves six as a first course, six apiece.
Printanière is French kitchen shorthand for spring, normally attached to a garnish of young vegetables cut small; here there are no spring vegetables at all, and the name may rest on nothing more than the green of the herb butter. The book is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe reflects that restaurant's manner of treating oysters around the turn of the twentieth century, when the beds of Long Island Sound and the Chesapeake still supplied the city in enormous quantity and oysters were cheap enough to serve half a dozen a head without comment. The half shell, the crumb, the compound butter and the quick fierce oven are all standard French service technique applied to an American glut, which is more or less the working formula of the whole book.