ROBERT MAY ON OYSTER STEW
In the seventeenth century, large defining cookbooks started to appear throughout Europe. These were books in the tradition of Taillevent but with more explanation and flowing prose. The first of these books in England came out the year the civil war ended and monarchy was restored. Not surprisingly, Robert May, the author, cooked for the Catholic royalists. His book, The Accomplisht Cook, offered one thousand well-written and detailed recipes.
—M.K.
To stew oysters in the French Way.
Take oysters, open them and parboil them in their own liquor, the quantity of three pints or a pottle; being parboil’d, wash them in warm water clean from the dregs, beard them and put them in a pipkin with a little white wine, & some of the liquor they were parboil’d in, a whole onion, some salt, and pepper, and stew them till they be half done; then put them and their liquor into a frying-pan, fry them a pretty while, put to them a good piece of sweet butter, and fry them a therein so much longer, then have ten or twelve yolks of eggs dissolved with some vinegar, wherein you must put in some minced parsley, and some grated nutmeg, put these ingredients into the oysters, shake them in the frying-pan a warm or two, and serve them up.
To stew Oysters otherways.
Take a pottle of large great oysters, parboil them in their own liquor, then wash them in warm water from the dregs, & put them in a pipkin with a good big onion or two, and five or six blades of large mace, a little whole pepper, a slic’t nutmeg, a quarter of a pint of white wine, as much wine-vinegar, a quarter of a pound of sweet butter, and a little salt, stew them finely together on a soft fire the space of half an hour, then dish them on sippets of French bread, slic’t lemon on them, and barberries, run them over with beaten butter, and garnish the dish with dryed manchet grated and searsed.
—from The Accomplisht Cook, 1685 revision
ANTON CHEKHOV ON OYSTERS
I can easily recall the rainy twilight autumn evening when I stood with my father in a crowded Moscow street and fell ill, strangely. I suffered no pain, but my legs gave way, my head hung on one side, and my speech failed. I felt that I should soon fall.
Had I been taken to hospital at the moment, the doctor would have written: “Fames”—a complaint uncommon in medical text-books.
Beside me on the pavement stood my father in a ragged summer overcoat and a check cap. On his feet were big, clumsy goloshes. Fearing that people might see he had neither boots nor stockings, he wrapped his legs in old gaiters.
The more tattered and dirty became that once smart summer overcoat, the greater became my love. He had come to the capital five months before to seek work as a clerk. Five months he had tramped the city, seeking employment; only to-day for the first time he had screwed up his courage to beg for alms in the street.
In front of us rose a big, three-storied house with a blue signboard “Restaurant.” My head hung helplessly back, and on one side. Involuntarily I looked upward at the bright restaurant windows. Behind them glimmered human figures. To the right were an orchestrion, two oleographs, and hanging lamps. While trying to pierce the obscurity my eyes fell on a white patch. The patch was motionless; its rectangular contour stood out sharply against the universal background of dark brown. When I strained my eyes I could see that the patch was a notice on the wall, and it was plain that something was printed upon it, but what that something was I could not see.
I must have kept my eyes on the notice at least half an hour. Its whiteness beckoned to me, and, it seemed, almost hypnotised my brain. I tried to read it, and my attempts were fruitless.
But at last the strange sickness entered into its rights.
The roar of the traffic rose to thunder; in the smell of the street I could distinguish a thousand smells; and the restaurant lights and street lamps seemed to flash like lightning. And I began to make out things that I could not make out before.
“Oysters,” I read on the notice.
A strange word. I had lived in the world already eight years and three months, and had never heard this word. What did it mean? Was it the proprietor’s surname? No, for signboards with innkeepers’ names hang outside the doors, and not on the walls inside.
“Father, what are oysters?” I asked hoarsely, trying to turn my face towards his.
My father did not hear me. He was looking at the flow of the crowd, and following every passer-by with his eyes. From his face I judged that he dearly longed to speak to the passers, but the fatal, leaden words hung on his trembling lips, and would not tear themselves off. One passer-by he even stopped and touched on the sleeve, but when the man turned to him my father stammered, “I beg your pardon,” and fell back in confusion.
“Papa, what does ‘oysters’ mean?” I repeated.
“It is a kind of animal.… It lives in the sea.…”
And in a wink I visualised this mysterious animal. Something between a fish and a crab, it must be, I concluded; and as it came from the sea, of course it made up into delightful dishes, hot bouillabaisse with fragrant peppercorns and bay leaves, or sour solianka with gristle, crab-sauce, or cold with horseradish.… I vividly pictured to myself how this fish is brought from the market, cleaned, and thrust quickly into a pot … quickly, quickly, because every one is hungry … frightfully hungry. From the restaurant kitchen came the smell of boiled fish and crab soup.
This smell began to tickle my palate and nostrils; I felt it permeating my whole body. The restaurant, my father, the white notice, my sleeve, all exhaled it so strongly that I began to chew. I chewed and swallowed as if my mouth were really full of the strange animal that lives in the sea.…
The pleasure was too much for my strength, and to prevent myself falling I caught my father’s cuff, and leaned against his wet summer overcoat. My father shuddered. He was cold.…
“Father, can you eat oysters on fast days?” I asked.
“You eat them alive …” he answered. “They are in shells … like tortoises, only in double shells.”
The seductive smell suddenly ceased to tickle my nostrils, and the illusion faded. Now I understood!
“How horrible!” I exclaimed. “How hideous!”
So that was the meaning of oysters! However, hideous as they were, my imagination could paint them. I imagined an animal like a frog. The frog sat in the shell, looked out with big, bright eyes, and moved its disgusting jaws. What on earth could be more horrible to a boy who had lived in the world just eight years and three months? Frenchmen, they said, ate frogs. But children—never! And I saw this fish being carried from market in its shell, with claws, bright eyes, and shiny tail.… The children all hide themselves, and the cook, blinking squeamishly, takes the animal by the claws, puts it on a dish, and carries it to the dining-room. The grown-ups take it, and eat … eat it alive, eyes, teeth, claws. And it hisses, and tries to bite their lips.
I frowned disgustedly. But why did my teeth begin to chew? An animal, disgusting, detestable, frightful, but still I ate it, ate it greedily, fearing to notice its taste and smell. I ate in imagination, and my nerves seemed braced, and my heart beat stronger.… One animal was finished, already I saw the bright eyes of a second, a third.… I ate these also. At last I ate the table-napkin, the plate, my father’s goloshes, the white notice.… I ate everything before me, because I felt that only eating would cure my complaint. The oysters glared frightfully from their bright eyes, they made me sick, I shuddered at the thought of them, but I wanted to eat. To eat!
“Give me some oysters! Give me some oysters.” The cry burst from my lips, and I stretched out my hands.
“Give me a kopeck, gentlemen!” I heard suddenly my father’s dulled, choked voice. “I am ashamed to ask, but, my God, I can bear it no longer!”
“Give me some oysters!” I cried, seizing my father’s coat-tails.
“And so you eat oysters! Such a little whipper-snapper!” I heard a voice beside me.
Before me stood two men in silk hats, and looked at me with a laugh.
I remember a strong hand dragged me into the glaring restaurant. In a minute a crowd had gathered, and looked at me with curiosity and amusement. I sat at a table, and ate something slippy, damp, and mouldy. I ate greedily, not chewing, not daring to look, not even knowing what I ate. It seemed to me that if I opened my eyes, I should see at once the bright eyes, the claws, the sharp teeth.
I began to chew something hard. There was a crunching sound.
“Good heavens, he’s eating the shells!” laughed the crowd. “Donkey, who ever heard of eating oyster shells?”
After this, I remember only my terrible thirst. I lay on my bed, kept awake by repletion, and by a strange taste in my hot mouth. My father walked up and down the room and gesticulated.
“I have caught cold, I think!” he said. “I feel something queer in my head.… As if there is something inside it.… But perhaps it is only … because I had no food to-day. I have been strange altogether … stupid. I saw those gentlemen paying ten roubles for oysters; why didn’t I go and ask them for something … in loan? I am sure they would have given it.”
Towards morning I fell asleep, and dreamed of a frog sitting in a shell and twitching its eyes. At midday thirst awoke me. I sought my father; he still walked up and down the room and gesticulated.
—from “Oysters,” 1884,
translated from the Russian
ELEANOR CLARK ON BELONS
Eleanor Clark, the author of several novels, won a National Book Award for her beautiful little 1959 book about the Breton village that produces the famous Belons oysters.
—M.K.
The outcome is a little luxury item, of rather large economic consequence but no great importance to the world’s nourishment. It should be. The oyster is very high in nutrition value, at least as much so as milk, but that is scarcely relevant as things stand because not enough people can afford it. So the whole point is flavor, and sociologically speaking, how can you justify that? Is it worth all the pain and trouble? Should it even be allowed?
You can’t define it. Music or the color of the sea are easier to describe than the taste of one of these Armoricaines, which has been lifted, turned, rebedded, taught to close its mouth while traveling, culled, sorted, kept a while in a rest home or “basin” between each change of domicile, raked, protected from its enemies and shifting sands etc. for four or five years before it gets into your mouth. It has no relation at all to the taste, if there is one, of the usual U. S. restaurant oyster, not to mention the canned or frozen one. (No Armoricaines are canned, or frozen; there is no such business.) Or rather yes, it has the relation of love to tedium, delight to the death of the soul, the best to the tolerable if tolerable, in anything. Or say of French bread, the kind anybody eats in France, to … well, never mind. It is briny first of all, and not in the sense of brine in a barrel, for the preservation of something; there is a shock of freshness to it. Intimations of the ages of man, some piercing intuition of the sea and all its weeds and breezes shiver you a split second from that little stimulus on the palate. You are eating the sea, that’s it, only the sensation of a gulp of sea water has been wafted out of it by some sorcery, and are on the verge of remembering you don’t know what, mermaids or the sudden smell of kelp on the ebb tide or a poem you read once, something connected with the flavor of life itself …
—from The Oysters of Locmariaquer, 1959
ARCHESTRATUS ON SMALL FRY FILEFISH, AND SOWFISH
Small fry [aphue]. Value as shit all small fry except the Athenian kind. I’m speaking of gonos which the Ionians call foam. Get it when fresh and caught in the beautiful bay of Phaleron, in its sacred arms. It is also of good quality in wave-girt Rhodes, if it is local fish. And if perhaps you desire to taste it, you should buy at the same time [sea] nettles, nettles with long locks. Mix them together and bake them on a frying pan, grinding the fragrant flowers of the greens in oil.
In Aenus and the Pontus buy the sow-fish, which some mortals call the ‘dug-out-from-sand.’ Boil the head of this fish, adding no flavourings, but putting only in water and stirring often. Serve by it pounded hyssop, and if you want anything more, drip on it sharp vinegar. Then dip it well and hurry, even to the point of choking, to swallow it eagerly. The fin and the other parts of the fish are baked.
Selachians: now famous Miletus nurtures the best. But why talk of the file-fish or the broad-back ray? I would as soon dine on oven-baked crocodile in which the children of the Ionians take delight.
—from The Life of Luxury, c. 330 B.C.,
translated from the Greek by John Wikins and Shaun Hall
JOSÉ MARIA BUSCA ISUSI ON COD AND ON THE BASQUE PROBLEM
The cod most frequently eaten today is gadus morhua (bacalao, makailo), which has been gutted and cured before it reaches our markets. This species does not inhabit our coasts. Those fish called fresh cod in the markets are specimens of whiting (Merlangus merlangus) or pollack (Pollachius pollachius).
The true codfish or bacalao inhabits the North Atlantic, spreading throughout the European area from France to Norway. Its appearance in Cantabrian waters is rare. It prefers the deep waters of cold seas.
According to some, the term bacalao, as well as the Danish word bakelau and the Dutch baukaelja, is derived from the island of Bacalieu, near Newfoundland. According to others, bacalao comes from the Gaelic word bachall, a type of pole on which bacalao was once dried.
Whatever the etymology of the word, the fact remains that cod is of great economic importance and for centuries has played a vital role in the nutrition of European peoples. Arguments over cod and whales have spurred on numerous wars and disputes, and through the centuries diplomats have had to negotiate these constant disagreements between the fishermen of different nationalities.
Up until recently, cod was caught by hook only and prepared and cured on shore near its native waters. Today it is widely fished with nets and prepared in commercial factories.
The same thing has happened with cod as with chorizos, hams, wines, liquors, etc. Industry has ensured uniformity and economy in these products, but the quality of the more naturally prepared foodstuffs cannot be maintained. In industrial preparation of cod, heat, cold, and chemicals enter into the process. The economic results are favorable but the gastronomic ones are detestable. A well-cured bacalao should ideally possess white and flexible meat, dark skin, and its own unique smell which it should maintain throughout culinary preparation.
Basque fishermen have caught and consumed this fish for centuries. Today cod is considered second-rate in the majority of countries, but in our country it is prepared with a particular technique that raises its status and converts it into a dish worthy of the finest tables.
The culinary problem of converting a dried and cured fish into a succulent dish has been solved by following either of two completely different procedures.
One method—primitive and rough—is the one used in the preparation of zurrukutuna and ajo arriero. In this procedure pieces of cured cod are grilled over coals. Aided by the heat, the salt impregnates the fish and removes the little water that remains in the cells. At that moment, the pieces dampen and go soft. In this state it is easy to remove the skin and spines and at the same time break the white meat sections into pieces. The fish is rinsed with water to remove excess salt. In this way it is readied for its final preparation.
To make ajo arriero, the cod is soaked in an oil in which generous amounts of chopped garlic, peeled peppers, tomatoes, and red peppers have been browned. This original dish is very different from the effeminate ajo arriero that is served in many restaurants, where the dish is not only robbed of its flavor but also adulterated with lobster.
In the countryside, ajo arriero—accompanied by a wine of the quality of a Murchante and a good bread made with flour from the Bardenas—is a good culinary representative of the noble Ribera region and is a delight
to the palate.
Zurrukutuna begins with the same desalting process used for ajo arriero, and the cod is then added to a soup along with tomato and bread. There are many recipes, all more refined than that for ajo arriero.
The second preparation of bacalao is slow, smooth, and wise. Created on the coast, it is one of the glories of Basque cooking. The cod undergoes a two-part preparation: the desalting and then the tempering or setting of the bacalao in hot water. The best procedure for desalting is to submerge the fish in a river or stream of clean water for about eighteen hours.
When our rivers deserved the name “river” and were not full of contaminants and sewage as they are today, they well could have accommodated such an operation. Now we must settle for immersing the fish in large vessels of cold water and changing the water every four or five hours.
After this time spent in the water, the cells—now salt-free—are in a condition to recover a lot of the water lost in the curing process.
To temper the cod, the pieces are placed in a pot with cold water and put on the heat in such a way that the temperature rises slowly. The temperature of the water should not exceed 65° C (150° F). The operation of tempering is the criterion for knowing the quality of the fish. If it is of prime quality it will become white, firm, and smooth. If it is a commercial bacalao in which chemicals have been introduced, we will end up with a fibrous mass, and in this case it is best not to continue with the preparation. Cod can be in the water at 60° C (140° F) for about forty-five to sixty minutes.
There is a method for rapid tempering which consists of heating the pot as rapidly as possible until a froth appears on the surface. This operation must be carefully watched. It is justified only as a timesaving measure, because if the water reaches 90° C (195° F) the precious gelatins in the skin are lost.
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