Oyster Soup

This seems the best of the four oyster soup recipes published in the Argus in 1928, but two of those recipes appeared in ads for "Oystero" - "a concentrated oyster powder made from fresh, clean, whole oysters by vacuum process". The first Argus recipe for real oyster soup calls for 18 fresh oysters, the second for 36.

Oyster Soup

18-24 fresh Sydney rock oysters
125 ml milk or 2 tablespoons cream
600 ml fish stock, or less stock and some milk

squeeze of lemon juice

1 teaspoon anchovy sauce, or 1 small anchovy finely chopped

30g butter

45g plain flour

cayenne

Melt the butter, add the flour, cook on a low heat for a minute. Add the stock gradually, stirring until it comes to the boil, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice, anchovy sauce and cream, and "as much cayenne as will cover a threepenny bit".

Put the oysters in soup bowls and pour the stock over. Serve with small thinly-sliced buttered sippets of toast. Serves 4 to 6.