On Oyster-Shucking
In life, the importance accorded to things and people often depends on the perspective from which one judges them, and on the learning of the judge.
To the common man, for example, nothing could be less remarkable than how, or when, one opens an oyster. In the eyes of a true gourmand, by contrast, there is nothing more important.
If we follow this prized mollusc from the moment he is torn from his birth-rock, watch him grow plump in the shallow beds that serve as his finishing school, and see him placed in the basket that will be his last stop en route to the table, we will observe that his vitality never wanes, and that he is still alive when he meets his shucker.1
One finds proof of this fact not only in the movements of the oyster—if all is as it should be, it will open of its own accord at high tide, as though to drink in the seawater that nourishes it—but also by means of a simple experiment that consists of gently touching, with a pointed object such as the tip of a knife, a freshly opened oyster’s frilled edge. By the contractions of this part, the primary seat of sensitivity, one knows the oyster to be as full of life as when it left Dieppe, Cancale or Étretat.2
It is only on being detached from its shell that the oyster perishes. Therefore, true oyster-lovers (such as, for example, the late Monsieur Grimod de Verneuil, president of the Tasting Jury3) expressly prohibit oyster-shuckers from performing this action–leaving the task to be carried out at the table by the diners themselves, so that they might devour the mollusc while it still lives.
We trust we have made our case that a healthy oyster remains alive right up to the moment of detachment, and that it is at that very moment that we must consume it, if we wish to taste it at its best.
In view of this, what are we to make of those who have their oysters shucked hours before serving, who don’t eat them until they are long dead and have begun to putrefy?
Let us follow instead the example of our revered president: rather than keep the oysters waiting, let us take each one straight from the hands of the shucker, who will not be permitted to wrest them from their shells. It will certainly ensure that we eat fewer of them, and spend more time doing so—but this method, which preserves the oysters’ vitality, takes nothing away from the pleasure of swallowing them. Rather, it permits us to enjoy, in its full expression, the supreme voluptuousness of consuming them: a prize that the good denizens of Paris know well, for nowhere in the world does the oyster receive a warmer welcome.
Annotations
1. Grimod uses the word 'ouvreuse'–that is, a specifically female opener of oysters. Evidently, oyster-shucking was women's work.
2. Towns in north-western France. Cancale is still known as the oyster capital of Brittany.
3. Grimod came up with his 'Jury de Dégustation' in 1809. Every Tuesday, members would gather at his house or a restaurant and stuff themselves with free food, provided by restaurateurs who wished to curry favor. If a dish was to their pleasing, the jury would repay the man responsible by giving it some poetic, evocative name. Needless to say, this roused the ire of many a chef, who questioned the ethics of such a system.