Horace, Martial, and Juvenal, Cicero and Seneca, Pliny, Ætius, and the old Greek doctor Oribasius, whom Julian the Apostate delighted to honour, have all enlarged upon the virtues of the oyster. It would be easy to add to the list and to quote corroborative passages, but the thing has been done so often and so copiously, that it would certainly be supererogatory and tedious. The Tabella Cibaria has been referred to by every culinary scribe, and we really know more about the oyster habits of the Romans than we do about those of the inhabitants of the Hebrides; which is absurd.
G. A. Sala says that the Pontiffs of Pagan Rome caused oysters to be served at every repast; but the delicacy must have been very expensive, since a basket of oysters cost the equivalent of nine pounds sterling. They were served raw and were dexterously opened by a slave at a side-table at the beginning of the dinner.
There is a story told of an astute Roman epicure named Fulvius Hirpinus who constructed on his estate, close to the seashore, a fish-pond where he stored or “parked” oysters, which he fattened with paste and cooked wine, worked to the consistency of honey. He was certainly astute because besides regaling himself and his friends on these artificially fattened oysters, he drove a roaring trade in selling them wholesale and retail to the nobility and gentry of Rome.
The same authority goes on to say that, oddly enough, in a comparatively modern cookery book, that of Will Rabisha, there is a direction, a rather ferocious one, that while oysters are undergoing the process of broiling they should be fed with white wine and grated bread. Of course many ways were adopted in those days for the feeding of oysters; but a paste of oatmeal and water seems to have been the staple of the sustenance given to the creatures before they were considered to be fit for the table.
The Greeks, according to Athenæus, boiled and fried their oysters, finding them, however, best of all when roasted in the coals till the shells opened.
As early as the seventeenth century the French prepared them en etuvée and en fricasée. Both recipes appear in the “Délices de la Campagne” (1654), a book of extreme interest and full of quaint information; but not, it would seem, strictly reliable as a record of the cookery of the time.
Frontispiece to “Des Magens Vertheidigung der edlen Austern” Prague, 1731
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