Eat Your Heart Out
Short days. Cold nights. Milk heating in a pan. Add salt, pepper, a big dollop of butter, and the prized ingredient, oysters. Sharing a bowl of oyster stew with my dad was a special treat – only he and I liked this wondrous fare.
The oyster stew tradition in my house started after my 2008 post to my now defunct blog at Ancestry.com. Again, this year, my daughter Sharon and grandson Ryan, replayed this family lore of the oyster stew on Christmas, so it seems to be a good time to share an updated version of that original blog post. Enjoy, my McPherson clan.
Oyster Stew, A Tradition
By Joan G. Hill
Short days. Cold nights. My dad and I hovered near the stove as milk heated in the heavy pan. Just before the milk got a slick film on top, we added salt, pepper, a big dollop of butter, and then the prized ingredient, oysters. Those days are ingrained in my memory bank – a special bond between father and daughter.
This image of food and memories was on my mind, when I decided to gather many favorite family recipes for a cookbook. Letters and phone calls went out to relatives. By Christmas, I was ready to publish and give my extended family a present of my book, Cooking Up Memories.
I was surprised when a few days after Christmas, I started receiving calls from my father's family. “Daddy loved his oyster stew!” came the calls from McPherson aunties and cousins. This rather plain oyster stew recipe that I held so fondly turned out to be a family favorite not only of my father, but also my McPherson uncles, grandfather, and great grandfather. Unfortunately, the wives of McPherson men were not so fond of oysters, much less oyster stew, so the oyster stew tradition tended to die out – except for my memories.
A few years later, I came into contact with McPherson kin scattered in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Arizona, California and Oregon. Not only did stories of oyster stew tumbled forth from these far flung cousins, but the recipe was the same that my dad made. Some still clung to the tradition of oyster stew on Christmas Eve, while others merely told of that old Christmas tradition. One family even shared a recipe for old fashioned Scotch shortbread. Even though the family described a good use for the shortbread would be hockey pucks, they still made it to go along with their Christmas Eve fare of oyster stew.
How did this fondness for oyster stew happen? When I read a wonderful book called, The Big Oyster, History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky, the mystery opened up. Magnificent oyster beds abounded around New York harbors and estuaries as early as 10,000 B.C. When, in 1609, Henry Hudson gave up his search for the northern route for the fabled Northwest passage, he turned his ship, Half Moon, south towards warmer climes. As the ship sailed into what is now New York harbor and landed on Manhattan Isle, they were treated to the sweet smell of the island. At that time they did not know that the oyster, that wonderful bivalve, grew in such great numbers that the oysters processed and cleansed the entire New York estuary. What they rapidly found was that the oyster was a staple of the native Lenapes. Sailors, explorers, kings, nobles, and the poor would soon join the ranks of New York oyster lovers.
As New York grew, so did it's collective love of the bivalve. Oysters were brought by the ship loads and sold right off of the docks as well as from street corner carts - rather like hot dogs, bagels, and tacos today. They were bought and consumed by rich as well as the poor. Workers, like my great great grandfather, went down to the docks with the pails to fill with oysters. Men went to the ale houses to have a pint as well as a few oysters. The rich dined on oysters at newly opened restaurants and oyster houses. The high roller Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell, the beautiful lady often found on his arm, ate oysters by the dozens at New York's famed Delmonico's. Oyster recipes were jealously guarded by the rich. Up until the 20th Century, New Yorkers loved their oysters, and ate abundantly of the bounty of the surrounding sea.
Nineteenth century New York, noted for the best oysters in the world, was the milieu of my great great grandfather James Peter McPherson who came from Scotland in 1842. Eight years later, the New York tenements and teeming streets of immigrants began to feel like old Dundee, so my McPherson ancestor bundled his growing family onto a steamer. They traveled up the Hudson River, then by horse-drawn “canoe boats” through the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and through the Great Lake channels to Wisconsin. Not only did he take the love of oysters and oyster stew with him, New York oysters were being shipped near and far, even to the little Scots hamlet in Springdale, Wisconsin.
And that is how my family of McPherson descendants came to love our oyster stew. Now on Christmas Eve, I enjoy my bowl of steaming oyster stew and revel in this old family tradition.
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Daddy's Oyster Stew
(serves 1 adult and 1 child)
Daddy heated a small pan of milk (about 1 ½ to 2 c milk) to scalding. Then added a can of oysters and simmered until the oysters were thoroughly warmed. He then seasoned it with 1-2 TBS butter, then added salt and pepper as desired. He served it with crackers. We enjoyed it immensely.
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