The Working Man’s Oyster

Oysters were eaten by everyone in 18th century America. You will see them at the richest homes. You will see them in the poorest settings. In fact, there are times when oysters are even a survival food and is the only thing that people seem to be eating to stay alive. I want to be 100% clear right now at the beginning of this episode and say, I don't know a whole lot about oysters. I grew up in Indiana and Kentucky and we are far from the ocean. Now I know a lot of you folks grew up on the ocean and you probably grew up eating oysters all the time. And this is not exotic to you, but for me, I get the oysters today and I'm super excited about it. We go back to the original colonies and they're all along the Eastern seaboard. So people are very familiar with oysters. It's a saltwater shellfish and they are eating them a lot. Chesapeake Bay is even said to have had so many oysters that were thick as stones and there were so plentiful that ships had to be aware of them when they were coming in because they would almost create like walls or like tunnel shapes within the water. But before Europeans ever come here, there are native Americans and they are eating oysters. There are a lot of readings about how they ate so many that when Europeans showed up, there were just these mounds of shells that had collected and they assumed that they'd collected outside of native American huts or villages, but they're just almost like these mini little mountains of oyster shells that have just piled up over the years from people living off of them. The Indians who inhabited the coast before the arrival of the Europeans have made oysters and other shellfish their chief food. And at present whenever they come to a saltwater where oysters are to be got, they're very active in catching them and sell them in great quantities to other Indians who live higher up in the country. For this reason, you see immense numbers of oyster and mussel shells piled up near such places where you are certain that the Indians formerly built their huts. So it's not common in the time period also for people to have an understanding of there are different oyster banks where getting oysters is really easy. And so even if you're just kind of on a boat or on a ferry and you're going past one, oftentimes you could just stop to collect oysters. In fact, there was a reading that I came across the other day where somebody was on a ferry and there'd been kind of an altercation. So the ferry driver captain wanted to kind of make it up to him. It was like, listen, we're going past this oyster bank. I'll have my guys hop up and they'll get you a bunch of oysters and I'll make everything all right. We think about oysters now. A lot of times we think about oysters on a half shell. And so whether cooked or not cooked, we're going to pop those suckers open and we're going to eat them right out of the shell. Sometimes you're going to throw a sauce in there. Sometimes just a little bit of hot sauce. Sometimes you're going to make something like oysters Rockefeller where it's baked or broiled and there's this special thing. In the time period, there was a lot of that going on too, but they were also using oysters and they were making one pot dishes with them. They were making like a stew or something like that. And this recipe today is a ragu of oysters. Both of our recipes today are coming from the complete housewife by Eliza Smith. This was written in 1730. Put into your stew pan, a quarter pound of butter, let it boil. Then take a quart of oysters, strain them from their liquor and put them to the butter. Let them stew with a bit of shallot shred, very fine and some grated nutmeg and a little salt. Then beat the yolks of three or four eggs with the oyster liquor and half a pound of butter. Shake all this well together till it's thick and serve it up with sippets and garnish with sliced lemon. To make this ragu of oysters, first you're going to have to have your oyster shucked. And when you do that, you're going to save all of the liquid that comes out of the shell and you're going to put that into a bowl. And then we're going to get our butter into a pan. We're going to get that melted down. We're going to put in the oysters, some finely cut shallots, some salt and some nutmeg. And we're going to let that stew a little while. Now, once that's stewed, you're going to take it off the heat so that it cools a little bit. Now it doesn't have to cool down all the way, but the next step uses eggs and we don't want to cook those eggs when we pour it into that liquid. In a separate dish, we're going to put three or four egg yolks and we're going to combine that with butter and some of the liquid from the oysters. Now depending on how much yours have in them, you're just going to have to eye that and you're going to stir that all together. And then you're going to combine that with what is already in the pan. Now this is the tricky part because we don't want to cook those eggs. These eggs are here to be a thickening agent. At the end of this process, after you kind of combine that and heated it up, you're going to make sure that you continue to stir it so that you don't cook the eggs. And then you're going to have this nice thick rich yellow sauce of this flavor from the shallots and this egg yolk and the butter. And that's going to go into the dish with these oysters and be a wonderful sauce as we put that onto our sips. Now let's talk about oysters. Like I said earlier, I'm not from the East coast. I'm not from anywhere, any coast. And I don't know a whole lot about oysters. Today was the first time that I have ever really cooked with oysters. And shucking them can be a little bit difficult. Now, obviously like anybody that is alive now, I went onto YouTube and I was like, how do you shuck an oyster? And what I found out is it seems like it's a lot easier with a shucking knife, which I don't have. So if you use a paring knife or something small, you have to be careful because you can cut yourself like I did. Basically there's this little notch back here and you want to get your knife in there and you want to pry that open. And then after you get that kind of loosened up, you'll feel it. When it pops, you have a section right up here on the oyster where you're going to want to cut it away from the shell. Then you can get the top shell off and then you'll cut it off of the bottom shell and it'll be free. Now for this recipe, you want to save all the contents within the shell. So you might do it over a bowl or something like that. And if you get some shell flakes in there, then you can take those out later. We've talked a little bit about how the wealthy and the poor alike were eating oysters and it was very common. I found a reading that drives that home a little bit more. It also talks about where the best oysters are found and even how to use the shells. It is likewise a common rule here that oysters are best in those months which end with an R and their names such as September, October, et cetera. But they are not so good in other months. However, there are poor people who live all year long upon nothing but oysters with bread. Over and over again, you see that people are using oyster shells and they're burning that down so that they can use it for creating housing, walkways, all sorts of different kinds of structural uses, but they don't prefer it to stones. And so it kind of falls out of fair. People use it in a pinch. Some places you'll even find readings where they're talking about how their housing that they've built with lime from oyster shells just doesn't seem to hold up the way that they want it to. And even there was this one reading that was like three days before it rains, the walls just seem to get really wet. And so they didn't like it for that purpose. Oysters tend to be one of those things that you want to pop the shell open and use them immediately. But we do see a lot of pickling of oysters happening in these cookbooks where they're basically creating a solution with water and the liquor from the oysters themselves. And they're packing them into crocks and they're boiling that hot and they're sealing them close. So it would be very similar to pickling anything else in the time period, but they'll store for a while. We also see references to native American smoking oysters where they would take the oyster and they would put the shell directly on the coals and they would smoke them and preserve them that way. One of the huge questions in the comment section, or when we've run into people that they ask us about this channel is what did people eat as tavern fair when they're at taverns ends and coffee houses, what are they eating? What's the convenient food? And the answer a lot of times is oysters. Archeological digs have found serious piles of oyster shells outside of where taverns and coffee houses once were. And this is fair that they were eating while they were sipping on their beers. The point where it was like peanuts now or chicken wings. Now this is in food. This is tavern food. And it is really interesting to think not only were they doing that in a half shell kind of situation or cooking them until they opened, but they're also doing it in one pot dishes. They're making soups and they're making stews, but oysters are cheap food. And so rather than using a cut of beef, they're making oysters and they're serving it to their clientele. And there were even is so popular that there were even places that were referred to as oyster taverns. We call them oyster bars and that became more of a thing in the 19th century, but it certainly did exist in the 18th century. I've got another recipe speaking of tavern food from Eliza Smith. It's the same book as the last recipe. And I just want to do this real quick because it seems so much fun. It seems kind of like what we think of as tavern fair and it's fried oysters. There's nothing more tavern food than take this meat, fry it and let me eat it while I sip a beer. So we're going to do this as really quick and it's really simple. We're going to crack some eggs, put it into a mixing bowl and we're going to get the consistency, right? They just want a thick batter, right? And so we're going to put in some flour and some breadcrumbs and there aren't any true amounts here. We're looking for a thick batter. We're going to put some salt and some nutmeg, coat our oysters in it and get it to fry in some animal fat. I'm going to use a lard today. I think this demonstrates the full spectrum of what we're talking about here. This is a dish where you're just kind of like throwing it in this batter and frying it. And then here is this nice sauce with lots of butter and eggs, lemon slices, a very nice dish. So I'm going to start off with the fried oysters. We're going to see what they taste like and then we'll move on here. I don't think there's anything very special about that. I could have used more salt and nutmeg for sure. There wasn't enough seasoning. It's just kind of plain, kind of bland. Now this, I don't think there's going to be anything bland about this at all. That is something special. That is really good. It's really, really rich. The lemon kind of cuts it with some acidity. It's very meaty. There's a good amount of fat there. I mean, it's just like, it's special. That's a really good dish. This is one of the best dishes that I've cooked in this kitchen. If I can do it, a boy from Indiana, then you can do it at home too. And you have got to try this dish.