One need not have la bonne bouche—that is, a gourmet's fine sense of taste—in order to enjoy oysters. But if you are a gourmet, Oysters are undoubtedly one of your favorite foods. And history will tell you that gourmets through the ages have felt the same way about this odd little shellfish. The evidence is everywhere: in the kitchen middens remaining from prehistoric times in Western Europe, in the records left by the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the heaps of shells that the first white men found along our own Maine coast. The Romans, for example, were such great lovers of oysters that even in the second and first centuries D.C. they imported them from Britain and the demand soon outstripped the supply! These Roman epicures could recognize what oysters they were eating. Juvenal, writing of one such connoisseur, said,
He could tell
At the first mouthful if his oysters fed
On the Rutupian or the tacrine bed
Or at Circeii.
A latter-day poet, writing of oyster lovers, might substitute the names Chesapeake Bay, Long Island, and the West Coast, for all these oysters have distinctive flavors and fierce partisans who recognize their favorites instantly.
My first introduction to oysters was, naturellement, in France, which, like the United States, values the oyster beds along its coast line very highly. There Gallic ardor sharpens the arguments about the different types. When you go to France you must try the Marennes, named, as you may know, after a French seaport. They are unique because of their greenish color, the color derived from the microscopic sea plants on which they feed. According to tradition, the first Marennes were found during the siege of nearby La Rochelle in the seventeenth century. The citizens threw some oysters into an old bed. Long afterwards, when the oysters were dredged out, their greenish color so startled the fishermen that they were afraid to eat them. However, there are always a few brave souls who will take a chance; and those who did found that the flavor as well as the color had changed, and for the better. Today, the Marennes is the most sought-after and expensive French oyster. As a result, in the département of the Charente-Maritime, oysters are fattened in water enclosures called claires, where the minute organisms that impart the desired color and flavor abound.
You can travel the world over and eat oysters of many kinds, but nowhere are more care, effort, money, and research devoted to the production of fine oysters than right here in the United States. As every chef knows, no food, not even milk, is more carefully protected against harmful contamination. The waters where oysters are grown are constantly tested; samples of the oysters themselves are examined in increasing numbers each year by bacteriologists. The need for this meticulous care stems from the fact that so many oysters are eaten raw.
The question that intrigues most oyster lovers is why they are eaten only in the R-months. Tradition has something to do with it, and tradition is hard to put down. At any rate, we know this rule goes back as far as the year 1599 when Richard Butler, the vicar of an English country parish, wrote: “The oyster is unseasonable and unwholesome in all the months that have not the letter R in their names.” More recent investigations have brought to light the fact that European oysters are subject to a specific summer disease which is fortunately not a problem with oysters grown in the United States coastal waters.
An assistant surgeon general of our Department of Public Health has cited another peculiarity of European oysters from which the R rule may have originated. He says: “In that species of oyster eaten in the Old World for centuries, fertilization of the seed from which the baby oysters grow takes place within the shell of the parent oyster. Shortly before the baby oysters are ejected by the patent to fend for themselves, they begin to develop a shell. If the Old World oyster is eaten at this stage of incubation, the large number of microscopic baby oysters, each developing a shell, imparts a gritty quality to the meat. Because the reproductive period of all oysters is in summer, early settlers to this country, cognizant of this but mindful only of their Old World variety, avoided placing New World oysters on the menu until later in the year. Even after our forefathers discovered that the North American East Coast oyster fertilizes its eggs in the sea water outside the parent shell, oyster consumption in this country continued, for the most part, to be a winter activity. Partly responsible for this was the fact that only in recent years have refrigeration facilities been developed whereby oysters can be preserved in warm weather while being transported from the coastal growing areas.”
There still remains one valid reason for applying the R-month tradition to oysters grown in our own coastal waters: the fact that oysters are not in prime condition during the summer months because it is the breeding period. After spawning they lose weight and become watery, and consequently less flavorful. Then the spawned-out oysters normally have to go through a resting period before they begin to fatten again. This whole process is not usually completed much before the onset of cold weather. The story of oyster breeding is fascinating and unusual, but it is too detailed to cover in this article. It is enough to say that because an oyster only swims for the short two weeks of its life when it is hardly out of the microscopic stage, and ever after lacks power of locomotion, it must grow where it attaches itself or where it is transplanted by the hand of man. What actually happens in the industry is that oystermen put in the beds millions of old shells for the tiny seed oysters to drop onto and to cling to-this is technically, and descriptively called “the clutch.” When the oysters are about two years old, they are moved from the breeding grounds to other waters that provide the food they need to develop maximum succulence and a characteristic flavor. Oysters grown this way are fairly uniform in size and shape. On the other hand, there are areas all along the coast lines where oysters breed, grow, and are harvested without interference. But these are usually sold locally and are apt to vary greatly in size, shape, and flavor, according to the water and character of the bottoms where they have grown.
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