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Oysters with Alexandre Dumas Sauce
Place in a saucebowl a heaping teaspoon salt, three-quarters teaspoonful fresh-crushed very fine white paper, one medium-sized, sound shallot, peeled and very finely chopped, one heaping teaspoon very finely chopped chives, half a teaspoon finely chopped parsley. Gently mix together, then pour in half a teaspoon olive oil, six drops of tobasco sauce, one teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, a light saltspoon good fresh mustard, and lastly one light gill good vinegar; mix well, send to the table, and with a teaspoon pour a little of the sauce over each oyster just before eating them.
A dressed vinegar sauce for raw oysters on the half shell — essentially a loaded mignonette. It takes two minutes to mix and one obvious typesetting error to decode.
- "White paper" is white pepperA compositor's slip that survived into print. Read it as three-quarters of a teaspoon of freshly ground white pepper, which is a great deal of pepper and is meant to be: the sauce is spooned out a few drops at a time.
- A gillFour fluid ounces, or half a cup. "One light gill" means a scant half cup of vinegar, which is the whole liquid body of the sauce. Use a sharp wine vinegar, red or white; cider vinegar reads too sweet against oysters.
- A saltspoonThe smallest spoon in a Victorian cruet set, about a quarter teaspoon. "A light saltspoon" of mustard is therefore a generous pinch. "Good fresh mustard" most likely means prepared mustard rather than dry powder, though the phrase could also mean mustard freshly mixed; the recipe does not specify a type.
- SaucebowlAny small non-reactive bowl. Vinegar and shallot will pit unlined copper or scratched aluminium; glass or china is the safe choice.
- Let it sit, but not longThe recipe itself says to mix and send straight to the table. If you prefer, fifteen to thirty minutes' standing softens the raw shallot's bite; beyond a few hours the chives and parsley go dull and the shallot dominates.
- Half a teaspoon of oilNot a dressing — it is there to carry the pepper and round the acid. Do not be tempted to build a vinaigrette ratio; the sauce should stay thin enough to pour from a teaspoon.
- YieldAbout half a cup, which dresses four to six dozen oysters at the intended rate of a few drops each. Halve it for a single dozen unless you want leftovers, which keep a day or two refrigerated.
- Raw oystersBuy from a supplier with tags showing harvest date and water, keep them cold and shuck to order. Anyone pregnant, immunocompromised or with liver disease should not eat them raw at all, whatever the sauce — Vibrio is not affected by vinegar or Tabasco.
Alexandre Dumas p e life on a Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, published posthumously in 1873, and for the rest of the century his name attached itself to dishes in restaurant French the way Escoffier's later would \than than a strict formula. What is offered here is a mignonette, the classic French oyster sauce of vinegar, cracked pepper and minced shallot, pushed toward the American taste of its moment with Worcestershire and Tabasco, both widely used in American restaurant cooking by 1906. Alexander Filippini cooked for Delmonico's for many years, and The International Cook Book (1906) reflects a New York kitchen that treated French technique as a base and bottled sauces as legitimate seasoning. The instruction to dress each oyster individually at the table, rather than flooding the platter, reads as much as table manners as cookery.