Oyster Sauce

Sauce aux huîtres (oyster sauce) teaches concentration without violence. Oyster liquor must reduce enough to give the Normande Sauce a clean maritime depth, while the oysters themselves receive scarcely any cooking. Know this before touching the pan: a lively reduction strengthens the liquor, but a lively poach ruins the oysters.

The original entry assumed a saucier on staff and a pint of finished Normande Sauce waiting beside stock that never left the fire. At home, the Normande Sauce remains a finished component, exactly as the book keeps it, while a small nonreactive saucepan and damp linen handle the rest. The book's batch already suits a generous dinner table, so its proportion stays intact: two cups of Normande Sauce, one-half cup of reduced oyster liquor, twelve oysters. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Holding pans and repeated reheating were brigade scaffolding, so they go. The linen-strained reduction and the barely poached, neatly trimmed oysters are the dish, so they stay. Reserve a spoonful of cool Normande Sauce before you begin, because an overheated emulsion can be rebuilt, ça se rattrape. Most of all, watch the oysters: lift them the instant their edges begin to curl.