Oyster Recipes from 1878

People have been eating oysters for basically as long as there have been people, and this Valentine's Day they'll be a whole lot of shuckin' going on.

Ask any group of today’s oyster eaters and most will tell you they slurp them down raw. I’m told the Gulf oysters we get today are actually specifically grown to be eaten raw, though folks might add a little dash of hot sauce, and maybe eat them with a cracker.

There’s evidence that many, many thousands of years ago the people of that era were putting oysters in fire and cooking them until the shells popped open. Cooking them was also still very much a thing in Montgomery 145 years ago. So let’s pop open that shell and take a look at some lost oyster recipes from the Montgomery Advertiser in 1878.

Stewed oysters
This one isn’t as simple as chucking shucked oysters into boiling water. Well, OK, that's part of it. But the Advertiser warned readers that some bad cooks “boil them ever so long until the flavor is gone and they look like old rags.”

Apparently the secret to stewing oysters is to boil them quickly. Put them on the fire in their juices, and season them with a little flour or cracker dust to thicken slightly.

Read more 1878 Oyster Recipes here:
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/alabama/2024/02/13/lost-recipes-these-1878-oyster-dishes-come-with-pearls-of-wisdom/72064138007/