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Stuffed Oysters
Hash very finely the thirty-six oysters saved from yesterday's broth. Heat one ounce butter in a small saucepan, add six finely chopped shallots and cook for three minutes, then mix in half ounce flour and briskly stir while heating for one minute. Moisten with two gills milk and one gill cream, season with a teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, a teaspoon French mustard and a tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; thoroughly mix until it comes to a boil. Add the oysters, six finely chopped canned mushrooms, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and half bean finely chopped garlic. Mix the whole well together, then let gently cook for fifteen minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Dilute two egg yolks in a tablespoon cream and add to the force, and stir while cooking for two minutes more. Transfer the force upon a dish and let cool off.
Plunge the six deep, half-shells into boiling water for five minutes; remove and replunge in cold water; remove and wipe them thoroughly. Then evenly divide the preparation into six shells, neatly smooth the surface with a knife, evenly spread a teaspoon French mustard on them, sprinkle a few bread crumbs over, place on a tin and set in the oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A professional's leftover dish: the oysters have already been poached in yesterday's broth, so this is essentially a thick oyster mixture baked back into the shells. The measurements are Gilded Age restaurant shorthand.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills milk is 1 cup and one gill cream is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the cayenne 1/2 teaspoon and the nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon.
- "Half bean" of garlicA bean here means a clove; use half a clove, finely minced. The intent is a background note, not a garlic-forward sauce.
- "The force"Short for forcemeat — the bound, seasoned mixture. Once the yolks go in, keep it below a simmer or they will scramble and the sauce will break.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Ten minutes to brown crumbs on an already-cooked filling means a hot oven, around 425F; the dish only needs heating through and colouring.
- The oysters are already cookedThey came out of yesterday's broth, which is why fifteen minutes of further simmering does not ruin them outright — they are being reduced into a sauce base, not cooked. Raw oysters treated this way would go to rubber; if you start from raw, poach them briefly, chop, and add them at the very end.
- Holding overnightCooked oysters kept from the previous day must have been refrigerated throughout and should be used within a day. A professional kitchen of the period would have had ice storage and constant turnover; a home cook should treat cooked shellfish as a one-day ingredient.
- The shellsDeep half-shells are the cupped bottom valve, not the flat lid. The boiling-then-cold-water treatment cleans them; scrub off any grit first, and steady them on the tin with a bed of coarse salt or crumpled foil so the filling does not slide.
- Mustard twiceFrench mustard means smooth Dijon-style, not the ballpark yellow. It goes in once as seasoning and once as a thin glaze under the crumbs; the second teaspoon is divided among all six shells, so it is a scrape, not a layer.
- YieldSix filled shells — one course for six people, or a first course for three at modern portions.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906). Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York and wrote for readers who wanted restaurant cooking at home, which explains the opening line: the thirty-six oysters are the ones strained out of yesterday's oyster broth, and nothing in a professional kitchen was thrown away. Oysters were still cheap and abundant on the Atlantic coast at the turn of the century — New York beds supplied the city in quantities that would be unthinkable now — so a recipe premised on having three dozen spare cooked oysters was not extravagant but thrifty. The technique is straight French: a small roux, milk and cream, a liaison of egg yolks, then gratinéed under crumbs. What marks it as American are the Worcestershire and the cayenne, both fixtures of the period's oyster cookery.