Shakespere’s Falstaff remains an amusing character, familiar around the world, who leads younger associates down the wrong paths and celebrates the life of a n’ere do well. In a scene from one of the “Henry” plays, Falstaff is refused a loan by one of the other characters and tells him, in a huff:
“Well, then, the world’s mine oyster. I will with sword open.”
This phrase has since come to mean the latent opportunity which awaits youthful ambition. However, in the play it meant simply that Falstaff would use his sword to pry open the purses of victims who, out of fear, would hand over what he wanted. It didn’t mean a real oyster, although it would have been marvelous fun to watch him try opening one with a sword.
The British had been enjoying oysters long before the Romans invaded so, by the time Shakespere was writing plays, oysters had become celebrated on the plates of the well-to-do. In the chill waters around the British Isles, you could enjoy your delights on the halfshell year-round with little fear of dying. Not so much over here.
Warm ocean water can become infected with a deadly bacterium named “vibrio vulnificus” and which in the warm weather months are absorbed by oysters. These are the same bacteria which can also infect small open wounds on swimmers.
This is the origin of the proscription against eating shellfish harvested in months which lack the letter “R”. From May through August is when the vibrio bacterium is most likely to invade your warm water oysters. It was coined at a time when refrigeration was non-existent.
One of life’s lasting pleasures is to stand at a tin-sheathed bar quaffing a mug of beer and devouring a plate of ice cold, freshly shucked oysters. I suspect the observance of this pleasure is what motivated the most recent hysteria regarding oysters.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Ralph Nader spinoff and one of the most successful purveyors of food hysteria since the Third Reich, estimates that about seven people die each year from eating raw oysters. That puts your odds of death by oyster at about 1 in 20 million. So you can just go ahead and run me out another dozen, “por favfor”.
In 1903, Mark Twain, America’s foremost anthropological paleontologist and scientific archaeo-theologian, wrote an essay entitled “Was the World Made for Man?” His prescient observations regarding the oyster still ring true today:
“An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen-million years was a preparation for HIM but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man.”
Actually, oysters have been around for about 15 million years but humans have enjoyed them only recently, say roughly for the last 250,000 years. They may well have helped save a large fraction of the human race during the Ice Age because they were abundant, the cold was no problem and you didn’t have to waste a lot of energy running them down.
Could this be the origin of spring break?
Early evidence of a thriving oyster culture appeared painted on vases unearthed in the town of Baiae near the Bay of Naples. Scenes on the vases depict oysters being harvested and consumed by party animals around 97 B.C. Baiae was a resort town where wealthy Romans went to debauch themselves with wine and sex and wild beach parties.
Oysters in the diet have a long history of being an aphrodisiac. The Greek goddess, Aphrodite, was also the Roman, Venus; both being the same goddess of love. The Italian painter, Botticelli, depicted the birth of Venus arising from the sea out of an oyster shell. (It was a scallop shell because it looked better than an oyster shell and besides, Botticelli probably didn’t know the difference).
One of the most famous, sex-addicted party animals was Giacomo Cassanova, who reportedly ate 144 raw oysters daily to improve his performance in bed. He was also a highly talented scam artist and con man who could tell the most outlandish whoppers with a straight face, (including the one about the oysters would be my guess).
Oysters in America became tremendously popular in the 1800’s. Not only were they tasty, they also were abundant and inexpensive. You would have been hard pressed in 1890 to find a popular bar or hotel dining room that didn’t feature oysters.
This period of culinary bliss lasted until January 16, 1920, when Congress, cowering in fear before the Women’s Temperance Union, passed the Volstead Act (“Prohibition”) which effectively shuttered all the bars in America, thereby taking the oyster trade and oyster consumption into purgatory. Oysters never regained their former availability.
Opening and eating oysters had been a long-standing tradition in England by the time Shakespere wrote “Henry IV”. When he had Falstaff speak his line about the world being his oyster, it reflected a universal perception of the oyster as a worthy thing to be had simply by taking. The phrase has been with us ever since.
By far, my favorite way to enjoy oysters is on the halfshell but I also profess a healthy devotion to Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Bienville, Fried Oysters and Oyster Pudding. This last one is a crowd-pleaser and you can make it just as well as I can and I promise you won’t regret it. Nor will your guests.
This recipe is so absolutely delicious that even people who say they don’t like oysters will love it. It’s not hard to make. It’s also yours by becoming a paid subscriber and helping “Eat Your History” continue to survive
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