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Oysters
A Celebration in the Raw
By Jeremy Sewall, Marion Swaybill, Scott Snider Abbeville Press
Copyright © 2016 Jeremy Sewall
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1249-8
Excerpt from Chapter I: About OystersThe oyster—“greatly more complicated than a watch.”
—Aldous HuxleyFrom Ubiquity to Rarity and Back AgainFor centuries, audacious eaters the world over have cherished oysters. Undeterred by the rough shell and impervious to the unctuous meat, oyster lovers invariably are rewarded by delicate textures and bright, briny flavors.
Plentiful in waters along the coast and high in calcium, iron, and protein, oysters were a dietary staple of the indigenous population and European settlers. By 1763 a humble saloon opened on Broad Street in New York City, the first public house to put oysters on the diners’ menu. Soon Amboys, Jamaicas, and Rockaways were advertised—then, as now, they were named for their place of origin.
So it began in America.
As the nineteenth century unfolded, oyster establishments could be found in every town along the East Coast and, after the Gold Rush, on the West Coast as well. Thanks to new rail lines and refrigerated boxcars, oysters were now reaching eager diners in the middle of the country too. Fancy oyster parlors sprang up down the street from rowdy oyster bars, and around the corner from oyster pushcarts. For some, a few slurps made a cheap meal. For others, oysters were an essential part of a leisurely dinner out or a sumptuous addition to a beautifully appointed table at home.
America was producing upwards of two billion oysters a year. And then, oyster production crashed.
As hungry patrons demanded ever more oysters, the industry responded with aggressive over harvesting that resulted in extensive destruction. Suppliers also began importing common European oyster species to broaden the supply; foreign breeds proved incompatible with local waters and rapidly spread disease.
Across the country, Washington State’s native Olympia oysters were disappearing too. As on the East Coast, over harvesting and disease were the likely causes. Eastern oysters were introduced to the West Coast with much anticipation but failed in the colder Pacific waters.
The once-abundant oyster supply was vanishing.
From the Industrial Revolution onward factory debris, dangerous chemical waste and increasingly damaging pollutants poured into estuaries and battered coastlines. Oyster reefs across North America were decimated, with some dying out altogether. By 1970, “Atlantic oyster culture fell to just one percent of its historical capacity.”
America’s bountiful bivalves became a rarity, a culinary luxury enjoyed primarily by the rich.
To the delight shellfish lovers everywhere, oysters are on the rebound. Over the past several decades, advancements in aquaculture, local food entrepreneurship, concern for the environment, vigorous water quality regulations, and greater producer and consumer confidence have contributed to the great oyster revival.
Though wild oysters abound in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, almost all the oysters we savor are farmed and nurtured along the reinvigorated coasts. More and more are harvested with every passing year.
All over America upscale, trendy restaurants, neighborhood bistros featuring dollar-an-oyster happy hours, and chic, new raw bars are satisfying a demand for oysters not seen for almost a century.
Location is EverythingThe flavor of an oyster depends on several things. . . . It will taste like a Chincoteague or a Bluepoint or a mild oyster from the Louisiana bayous or perhaps a metallic tiny Olympia from the Western coast. Or it may have a clear harsh flavor, straight from a stall in a wintry French town, a stall piled herringbone style with Portugaises and Garennes. . . . Or it may taste firm and yet fat, like the English oysters from around Plymouth
—MFK FisherLike wine, oysters mirror their natural environment and draw overall flavor from the waters in which they live. There’s the pure, sharp brininess of Atlantic oysters and the sweeter, kelpier smoothness of Pacific oysters. Aquatic micro-zones contribute the more subtle flavor attributes. These highly individualized environments are the reason you hear so many different words used to describe the way oysters taste, look, and feel. Sublimely balanced Island Creeks. Sweet, fruity Hama Hamas. Creamy, herbaceous Hog Islands. Perfect, buttery Kumamotos. Earthy Olympias. Brassy Belons.
Water temperature is largely responsible for the texture of oysters. Oysters from the colder waters of Nova Scotia or Maine, for example, are firmer, crisper, and saltier than those from Virginia or the Gulf. Plumpness and toothiness are influenced by the quantity and quality of nutrients in the water— more nutrients mean more heft and more flavor.
The specific combination of water conditions that determines the flavor and character of oysters is called, somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, merroir , reflecting wine lovers’ use of the term terroir—the combination of soil, topography, and climate that produces different varieties of grapes.
Though there are only five oyster species, merroir produces hundreds of varieties that are distinct in taste, texture, and appearance. Most often, these varieties are named for where they are harvested—for their merroir. Peters Point, Glacier Bay, Blue Pool, Chatham, and Pemaquid are some of the best-known examples.
Understanding merroir is essential if you want to know which oysters you’re ordering and how they will taste and feel in your mouth.
The saltiness of the seawater that courses over the oyster’s body twenty-four hours a day has the greatest impact on its flavor. The Atlantic is saltier than the Pacific so you can expect eastern oysters to taste more of the sea than their western counterparts. There are further flavor distinctions within these broad categories. Oysters from the Chesapeake Bay, for example, are considerably less salty than those grown nearby in deeper Atlantic waters. Firm, briny Island Creek Oysters are considered among North America’s best, in large measure because of the unique water conditions in Duxbury Bay, where they grow.
As filter feeders, oysters extract algae, plankton, and other food particles from their immediate environment. Along with seawater these tiny organisms give oysters their nuanced flavor profiles and textures. Different seaweeds produce different notes— fruitiness, nuttiness, citrus, mineral, metallic, and vegetal among them. In general, oysters from the Pacific Northwest can be described as having hints of watermelon and cucumber, though flavors are more cucumber-like in British Columbia and more melony in Washington.
In essence, oysters are what they eat.
And When They Eat ItOysters are highly seasonal. The algae that sustains them bloom in the spring when the water temperatures warm, proliferate in the full sun of summer, diminish in the autumn and go dormant in the winter. Anticipating their dwindling food supply, oysters gorge in the fall, becoming plump and sweet, making autumn prime time for both harvesting and eating oysters. Fueled by their autumn feast oysters hibernate in the winter, when their food supply disappears altogether. They emerge thin in the spring, ready to feed on the newly blooming algae. And so it goes.
Each year they spend in the water, oysters grow another inch or so. In the ancient piles of oyster shells (known as middens) identified by archeologists, there are oyster shells up to two feet long. Foot-long shells are more common and indicate a ten to twenty year growing cycle.
Excerpt from Chapter IV - Oyster StoriesThe Original Food PornOysters evoke not only the idea of concealed virtue, since the eatable part is firmly enclosed within the valves, but also—and for the same reason—the power of love.
—Silvia Malaguzzi, Food and Feasting in ArtCenturies before we coined the term “food porn” to describe mouthwatering magazine spreads and seductive Instragram feeds, there were seventeenth century European still-life paintings. Sumptuous foods were rendered in magnificent detail and splendid banquet tables were depicted, laden with grapes, apricots, lemons, pheasants, venison, lobsters, wines—and oysters.
The Dutch, in particular, were obsessed with depicting oysters, no one more so than Osais Beert (c. 1580–1623/24). Beert is considered one the greatest still life painters of the period and the single greatest painter of oysters. [ch4_beert] Among his many gifts was the ability to replicate the play of light on the creamy, lustrous oyster flesh, shimmering oyster liquor, and rigid, pearlescent interior shell.
Considering the array of extravagant representations of oysters in all their glory—Beert’s and others—it’s easy to imagine the Golden Age of Dutch still-life painting as an equally Golden Age of oyster painting. Consistently, oysters were shown as symbols of taste and prosperity. They were also emblems of fertility, sensuality, and sexuality.
Over time grand scenes of lavish feasts of oysters gave way to more intimate, domestic moments, loaded with sexual innuendo. Oysters—and lovers—were put front and center, as the genre evolved from “feast to tryst.”
Jan Steen’s
Girl with Oysters (1658–60) shows a quintessential seventeenth century seductress. Innocent and provocative at the same time, she gazes directly at the viewer, seemingly offering the oyster she is salting— and herself. Behind the girl is a bed with closed curtains, as if to accentuate both the artist’s and the girl’s intent. [ch4_steen]
Ironically, according to Dutch food writer and chef Geron de Leeuw, “Rendering an oyster was a bit naughty [in the seventeenth century] since they stood for sexual freedom in a time when Calvinism swept the Netherlands.”
Two hundred years later Edouard Manet painted
Oysters, ostensibly for his fiancée. The composition, colors and, perhaps, even the meaning of the 1862 still life reflect the Dutch Masters he assiduously studied at the Louvre. With his bolder, more contemporary strokes, Manet achieves an even greater degree of lushness and sensuality in his depiction of oysters. Like the works of his forebears, if painted today, Manet’s
Oysters surely would achieve the hashtag, #foodporn.
The lure of oysters did not stop with Manet. From Henri Matisse to pop art icon Roy Lichtenstein to today’s commercial and decorative artists, there is no shortage of twentieth and twenty-first century oyster paintings. Although later artists have been less interested in sexual innuendo, oysters have not escaped them as objects of sheer erotic beauty.
Roy Lichtenstein delivers pop eroticism in his 1973
Still Life with Oysters, Fish in a Bowl and Book. With the economy of line and hard-edged literalness for which he is famous, Lichtenstein delivers larger-than-life, surprisingly sensual, mouthwatering mollusks. [ch4_lichtenstein]
On a grand scale or small canvas, from one generation and genre to the next, oysters fascinate, captivate, and rouse the creative spirit.
The Food of Love and Lust Lewdly dancing at a midnight ball
We should for hot eryngoes and fat oysters call . . .
—Juvenal, Sixth Satire
Think of oysters, try not to think about sex.
—Rebecca Stolt, OysterMen were eating oysters to enhance their sexual prowess long before pharmaceutical companies began developing drugs for the same reason.
Roman physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamon (129–c. 200) was one of the most accomplished and influential medical practitioners of the ancient world. He attended to many wealthy Romans, including royalty. When Galen’s rich and powerful patients confided about waning sexual desire and other libidinous matters, he prescribed oysters. Not surprisingly, oysters were consumed in vast quantities by the emperors and their courts, notably at imperial Roman orgies where they were piled by the thousands on banquet tables.
From the late first century poet, Juvenal through the Jacobeans and Elizabethans to the pop star Lady Gaga, oysters have epitomized pleasures of the flesh and sparked intimacy between lovers.
C.H. Chartier’s
Delectable Demaundes (1566) asked,
“Why were oysters consecrated by the auncient to venus? Bycause oysters do prouoke lecherie.” Decades later John Jones, in his play
Adstrata (1635), referred to oysters as
“self-swallowing provocatives.”Voluptuous oyster sellers were fixtures on the streets of seventeenth and eighteenth century London, with baskets of oysters strapped to their backs or balanced on their heads, their ample bosoms heaving under the weight. In the eyes of passersby, oyster sellers were one with their wares—objects of erotic gratification.
The legendary eighteenth century Venetian adventurer and lothario Giacomo Girolamo Casanova reportedly downed fifty oysters every morning to ensure his fabulous sexual stamina. In his memoirs, Casanova boasted of 122 liaisons and offered erotic tales of seduction and oysters. To wit:
I placed the shell on the edge of her lips and after a good deal of laughing, she sucked in the oyster, which she held between her lips. I instantly recovered it by placing my lips on hers.
Casanova’s amatory prose was echoed a hundred years later in
The Oyster, a scandalous underground magazine of erotica published in Victorian England. The title alone promised eager readers that tales of sex and seduction lay between the covers.
The seductive power of oysters was also showcased in Henry Fielding’s comic novel of 1749,
Tom Jones, which was adapted for the screen in 1963. That cinematic rendition featured one of the most memorable, bawdiest food scenes ever filmed, with the raffish young Tom lasciviously slurping oysters for the benefit of the randy wench at his side.
Across the Atlantic, America has had her fair share of risqué oyster seductresses as well.
Michael Ondaatje’s describes one such woman in his 1976 novel
Coming Through Slaughter, set in early-twentieth century New Orleans.
The best [whore in New Orleans] was Olivia the Oyster Dancer who would place a raw oyster on her forehead and lean back and shimmy it down over her body without ever dropping it.
Oysters and sex have mingled for decades in New Orleans, perhaps most notably in the character of Evangeline the Oyster Girl. An illustrious Bourbon Street burlesque dancer in the 1940’s and ‘50s, Evangeline seductively emerged from a giant oyster shell to perform her audacious striptease all the while holding an enormous pearl. For a time Evangeline dyed her hair seaweed green to complete her oysterly persona.
The idea for the Oyster Girl comes from a Bayou legend about a beautiful “supernatural seductress” named Evangeline who slept undisturbed at the bottom of the ocean. Every 100 years she’d rise from her oyster bed in search of earthly pleasures.
In real life, Evangeline was the creation Abby Jewel Slawson, also known as Kitty West, a poor girl from Mississippi who, at the age of sixteen, made her way to New Orleans in search of fame and fortune. She hit the oyster-as-aphrodisiac jackpot with the sultry Evangeline. New Oyster Girls have reprised Kitty’s fabled act ever since.
Today’s marketers and magazine editors make their own indelible contributions to the oyster-as-aphrodisiac mythology, especially around Valentine’s Day. Raw oysters are presented as the quintessential offering for modern lovers, with romantic couples shown entangled over platters of oysters, enjoying a hedonistic moment.
Modern scientists have also been taken with oysters, though they have sought a biological answer to the timeless question,
Are oysters aphrodisiacs? In 2005, Antimo D’Aniello of the Laboratory of Neurobiology in Naples and George Fisher, a professor of chemistry at Barry University, Miami reported a connection between oysters and increased testosterone in animals.
Studying mollusks, the researchers found that oysters are rich in rare amino acids that triggered increased levels of sex hormones in laboratory animals. The scientific jury is out on whether there is enough evidence to suggest a human link, but D’Aniello and Fisher’s findings fascinated their associated at the American Chemical Society nonetheless.
Apart from the amino acids noted by D’Aniello and Fisher, oysters are rich in zinc, a key nutrient found in male sperm. Do zinc and the recently identified amino acids make a difference? If you consume enough oysters, they may simulate your libido—or not.
Whatever the reason, when oysters do titillate, the aphrodisiac effect is less likely connected to your actual body chemistry and more a reflection of your overall sensory experience. The power of suggestion can be powerful indeed and should not be underestimated when it comes to oysters, nor should persuasive cultural subtexts reinforced from one generation to the next.
In the long trajectory of love, lust, and oysters, perhaps the fabulous Lady Gaga should have the final say on the subject. With legions of fans hanging on her every note, she minces no words in her 2013 hit song,
Venus:
Have an oyster, baby
It’s Aphrod-isy
Act sleazy
When all is said and done, written and sung, it may be that oysters are aphrodisiacs simply because we say they are.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Oysters by Jeremy Sewall, Marion Swaybill, Scott Snider. Copyright © 2016 Jeremy Sewall. Excerpted by permission of Abbeville Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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