Jonathan Swift - A Bold Man

The Irish satirist Jonathan Swift is often credited with thinking up this thought in the 1700s.

“It was a bold man that first ate on oyster”

Swift was not short of clever one liners, but in this case he borrowed it from Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England which was published 40 years earlier in 1662 and attributed to James 1:

“He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters"

This in turn was also made a more poetic growl by John Gay:

The man had a sure palate cover’d o’er
With brass or steel, that on the rocky shore
First broke the oozy oyster’s pearly coat
And risqu’d the living morsel down his throat

Swift obviously overcame his own fear of oysters and went on to pen this poem by which time he was an enthusiastic convert.

Charming oysters I cry:
My masters, come buy,
So plump and so fresh,
So sweet is their flesh,
No Colchester oyster
Is sweeter and moister:
Your stomach they settle,
And rouse up your mettle:
They'll make you a dad
Of a lass or a lad;
And madam your wife
They'll please to the life;
Be she barren, be she old,
Be she slut, or be she scold,
Eat my oysters, and lie near her,
She'll be fruitful, never fear her.

In letters Swift went as far as passing on a recipe:

“Lord Masham made me go home with him to-night to eat boiled oysters. Take oysters, wash them clean; that is, wash their shells clean; then put your oysters into an earthen pot, with their hollow sides down, then put this pot into a great kettle with water, and so let them boil. Your oysters are boiled in their own liquor, and not mixed water.”

And eventually in Gulliver’s Travels he has his hero gathering oysters and limpets on the shore (which he eats raw for fear of lighting a fire that might attract attention) to conserve his provisions

Cooking down the Thames

The oyster might often have ended up as part of a flamboyant display in medieval times for example with cabbage and fried larks; and fried frogs’ legs with oysters. Puddings too were typically made up with oysters. Suet pastry parcels were filled with blanched oysters, bacon, onion and parsley and steamed. The liquor from the oyster was mixed with chives and parsley and thickened with flour and butter to make a gravy. Steak and oyster pie can still be found. Looking back the pairing of meat and fish seems like a celebration of the end of fish days, or perhaps it was a ruse to circumvent the church’s dietary guidelines, an oyster pie might be acceptable if no one checked that it was garnished inside with beef.

Making a stuffing with oysters to cook with a chicken or other fowl was a common approach emanating from England and later adopted by the early settlers in Canada and America. Presumably, oyster with chicken would have been a special dish which may be why it is mentioned so often, not as today where the oysters would be the expensive ingredient but the other way round where the fowl was the prized centrepiece and the stuffing would have been a means of making the meal go further round the table. There are many recipes and variations, but this variation on what is almost an oyster hamburger, seems in tune with modern tastes.

Oyster stuffing for chicken

Poach the oysters briefly in a minimum of water, pour the liquor over some bread to soak and chop the oysters. Brown some sausage meat in a pan and mix in the bread chopped onion, garlic and the giblets from the chicken. Saute 5 minutes, Take off the heat and fill the chicken to roast.

On fish days there might have been a simpler rendition of just oyster sausages, the oysters poached, then chopped with herbs and anchovies, mixed with egg and breadrumbs, suet or butter and seasoned with pepper or nutmeg or both, this mix then fried off by the spoonful.

Another approach which was also widely adopted by the Americans was the habit of scooping out the middle of a roll or a loaf of bread and filling it with a sometimes quite exotic mix of oysters poached in cream, ale or wine with sweetbreads or other small pieces of offal, butter and onions and baking it off in the oven. Rather like pasties and hotpots this may well have its origins in bakehouses and cookshops and would have been a good way for the baker to use up unsold loaves.

Before the railways oysters were pickled in jars, not just by the Dutch but notably at Poole in Dorset and at Swansea and exported often to Spain and Italy and also the West Indies. The practice still survives in Swansea and is sold out through pubs. This recipe hardly changed through the centuries or around the world, although in American versions they will sometimes add chilli or more Tabasco. The wine, vinegar and sherry should be preservative enough to keep out of the fridge and are further early signs of links between the smaller ports with France and Spain.


Pickled oysters

Simmer peppercorns, salt, mace, wine, vinegar, sherry, and Tabasco over low heat for 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool. Shuck the oysters and put them, along with their liquor, into a sauté pan; simmer until they “begin to curl around the edges”. Put the cooked oysters into a quart container with a lid, then pour the cooled pickling sauce over. Cover

In defence of English cooking

Escoffier credits England only with devil’s on horseback, oysters wrapped in bacon on skewers and dusted with breadcrumbs and cayenne. Larousse is more dismissive. It offers an austere if not unflattering view of the cooking of this time with a singular recipe for oyster sauce credited to England. It says it is to serve with grilled meats, meat pudding or grilled cod.

Stir six tablespoons of oyster liquor with twice as much light brown stock, butter and flour. Season very lightly, bring to the boil and cook for 10 minutes.
Strain, add 12 poached, de-bearded and sliced oysters, and a pinch of cayenne.

That the oysters had to be sliced at all suggests that larger oysters were sent to the kitchen, where the smaller ones would have been sold out on the shell. It is not too clear why the oysters had to be pre-poached at all and not just cooked in the stock which probably would have been just chicken or meat broth, although in an alternative version Larousse suggests you might use milk, and certainly a splash of cream would be a welcome addition of smoothness. Possibly that might have been the difference between a rural approach and an urban tactic, depending on how much milk was around. The recipe though seems to be clearly designed for taverns or very big houses where stock was readily made for soup.

But in fact early English cooking offers a better insight into cooking of earlier centuries and was more of an inspiration to people of the new world who would become more adept at cooking with oysters.