Home › A Calendar of Dinners › September 17
September 17
Menu: Oyster Bisque; Broiled Lamb Chops; Griddled Sweet Potatoes; Bean Croquettes, Tomato Sauce; Cauliflower Salad; Cocoanut Custard; Coffee Oyster Bisque-Boil 1 quart oysters in their own liquor with about 1 pint mildly-flavored white stock. Let boil for 1½ an hour or even longer. Take up and strain, put back to boil, season with salt and white pepper as needed, add 1 quart rich milk and 12 a pint of cream. Blend together 1 tablespoon potato flour with 1 tablespoon melted Crisco, and with this thicken soup up till it is smooth and velvety.
A smooth strained oyster soup thickened with potato starch rather than a flour roux. Once the milk and cream go in, the pot should never return to a hard boil.
- The hinge: no boiling after the dairyMilk and cream held at a rolling boil with salted oyster liquor will curdle and separate, and the starch will thin out. Keep the finished bisque just below a simmer, around 180F, and serve promptly.
- The long boil, and what it is forThe printed page gives half an hour or even longer, as our text now reads. The purpose is to extract flavour from the oysters into the stock; they are taken up and strained out rather than eaten, which is why the usual two-minute rule does not apply. If you want oysters in the bowl, poach a second batch for one to two minutes in a little of their liquor and add at the end.
- Potato flourIn this period the term means potato starch (fécule). Buy it labelled potato starch; products sold today as potato flour are dried whole potato and behave differently. Whisk it with the melted fat off the heat to a smooth paste before adding, or it will seize into lumps. Cornstarch behaves similarly; wheat flour will need a few minutes of cooking to lose its raw taste.
- CriscoPlain vegetable shortening (hydrogenated cottonseed oil), and the product the book exists to sell. An equal quantity of butter can be substituted here and will give a richer soup.
- White stockA mild unsalted chicken or veal stock. "Mildly-flavored" is the operative word: a strongly reduced or herb-heavy stock will bury the oysters.
- Oysters and their liquorA quart of shucked oysters is roughly 40 to 50 mediums, or two of the pint tubs sold refrigerated. Do not drain them; the liquor is most of the flavour. Strain it through a fine sieve or cloth to catch shell grit.
- SeasoningSalt only after straining and reducing, since oyster liquor is already saline. White pepper is specified so the finished soup stays pale.
- YieldAbout two to two and a half quarts, serving six to eight as a first course.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a brand-new product: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a solid white fat that was neither butter nor lard. An oyster bisque is a slightly odd place for it, since the fat here does nothing but carry the starch, and the pairing shows how thoroughly the brand was worked into every course. Oyster soups themselves were long established on American tables by then; oysters were still cheap and abundant along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and a strained, cream-finished bisque was standard first-course fare for an autumn dinner.