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Tartlet of Oysters
Prepare six tartlet crusts, remove beans and thoroughly wipe. Place thirty-six fairly good-sized, fresh-opened bluepoint oysters in saucepan with their liquor, a half gill white wine, and let boil for three minutes. Lift up with a skimmer, thoroughly drain on a cloth, evenly spread a teaspoon anchovy paste over the six tartlets, arrange six oysters in each tartlet and lay on a tin. Mix in saucepan a tablespoon butter and one and a half tablespoons flour, then strain oyster broth into pan, add a half gill cream, half teaspoon each salt, cayenne and grated nutmeg, mix well until it comes to a boil, then allow to gently boil for eight minutes. Add an egg yolk, sharply whisk for one minute and evenly divide sauce over oysters. Sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese over all, set in brisk oven for six minutes or till a good golden colour, remove, dress on a hot dish and serve.
A late-Victorian oyster patty in miniature, written for a cook who already knows how to blind-bake pastry. Two things decide whether it works: how briefly the oysters see heat, and how far you take the seasoning.
- Don't cook the oysters twiceThree minutes at a boil followed by six in a hot oven will leave them shrunken and rubbery. Bring the liquor and wine just to a simmer, slip the oysters in for 30-60 seconds until the edges ruffle, then lift them out; they finish in the oven.
- A gillA gill is half a cup, so a half gill is 1/4 cup (60 ml) — that quantity applies to both the white wine and the cream.
- Brisk ovenRoughly 400-450F (200-230C); the term is imprecise. You are browning the top and warming the filling, nothing more, so watch it rather than trusting the six minutes.
- Tartlet crusts and the beansShortcrust shells blind-baked with dried beans as weights, the beans tipped out and the pastry wiped free of crumbs. The recipe gives no size; choose shells with enough capacity for six oysters plus sauce.
- Cut the cayenneHalf a teaspoon each of salt, cayenne and nutmeg is enormous by current palates for this quantity of sauce. Start with a pinch of cayenne and a scrape of nutmeg, then season at the end — oyster liquor and anchovy paste both bring plenty of salt.
- The sauceButter and flour cooked briefly, then oyster broth and cream whisked in. Eight minutes of gentle boiling is to cook out the flour; it will thicken considerably, so loosen with a spoonful of cream if it sets too stiff. Add the yolk off the heat and whisk hard, or it will scramble.
- BluepointsNamed for Blue Point on Long Island's Great South Bay, once a specific oyster and now a loose trade name for medium Atlantic cupped oysters. Any 2-3 inch briny oyster works; buy them shucked in their liquor and keep the liquor.
- YieldSix tartlets — a first course for six, or a light lunch for three.
The International Cook Book (1906) came from Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a professional's notebook: quantities in gills, thousands of short numbered entries, instructions that assume a brigade rather than a household. Oysters were the cheap luxury of the period, dredged from the Chesapeake and Long Island Sound in such volume that American cookbooks of the era often carry long oyster chapters, and the small filled pastry case — patty, croustade, tartlet — was a standard restaurant vehicle for anything rich and bound in sauce. The anchovy paste smeared under the oysters reads as an English touch, of a piece with the Victorian fondness for anchovy as a savoury undertone, and the Parmesan gratin on top is the Italian side of a kitchen that borrowed from everywhere and called the result international.