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Oyster Canapes
Oyster canapes are quickly prepared. For four people, chop sixteen oysters fine. Put two teaspoonfuls of butter into a saucepan or chafing dish. When it is melted, add three-quarters of a cupful of cream, scald and turn into it the oysters and two teaspoonfuls of grated bread crumbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste. In the meanwhile have ready oblong pieces of bread cut a quarter of an inch thick, which have been fried a golden brown in butter. Place them in the bottom of a dish and pour the oyster mixture over them.
A chafing-dish savoury that goes together in the time it takes to fry the bread. The whole thing hinges on not overcooking the oysters.
- The hinge: two minutes, no moreThe oysters go into already-scalded cream, and chopped as they are they need only a minute or two to turn opaque. Held longer, or allowed to boil, they tighten and weep liquor that thins the sauce.
- Scald means just below the boilBring the cream to about 180F, when it steams and shivers at the rim, then add the oysters off the strongest heat. A full boil will also break the cream once the oyster liquor goes in.
- Sixteen oystersSixteen shucked oysters is a variable quantity depending on size; buy them shucked in the tub rather than in the shell for this, drain them and reserve a spoonful of liquor in case the mixture needs loosening.
- Two teaspoonfuls of butterThat is a small amount for three-quarters of a cup of cream. The butter here is for flavour, not for thickening.
- Grated bread crumbsDry crumbs grated from a stale loaf, not the soft fresh kind and not the sandy packaged sort. They are the only thickener in the dish, so give the mixture a minute to swell before judging the consistency.
- The fried breadQuarter-inch slices of a firm white loaf, cut into oblongs and fried in butter until golden. Assemble and serve promptly.
- Chafing dish or saucepanEither works; a small heavy saucepan gives more control over the scalding than a chafing dish over a spirit lamp. Use the widest pan that will hold the cream in a shallow layer so the oysters cook evenly.
- Yield and servingAs written it serves four as a first course or savoury. Serve immediately, hot, with lemon or a little cayenne if you want to lift the cream.
Canapé for settee, and the culinary sense follows the image directly: a small piece of bread on which something is seated, in this case fried rather than toasted. Dishes like this belong to the American chafing-dish vogue of the 1890s and early 1900s, when a spirit lamp on the sideboard let a hostess cook oysters, rarebits and creamed shellfish in front of guests without troubling the kitchen; cookbooks of the period are thick with such quick, creamy, oyster-based savouries. Oysters were still cheap and plentiful enough on both American coasts to be everyday food rather than luxury, which is why a book like this can spend sixteen of them on a first course for four.