Oyster

Any of a family of various saltwater bivalve mollusks found all over the world. The Romans, true gourmets that they were, appreciated oysters. Fabius Rutilius, a Roman consul, died after eating more than 30 dozen of them. Louis XV ate them with tartar sauce. Early Americans found the shores of New York laden with oysters. Native Americans were eating oysters when the English arrived; the colonists made them an important part of their own diet. Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, when they lived in Springfield, Illinois, hosted oyster feasts at which oysters were eaten by the dozens. There were oyster houses in every eastern city, and oyster peddlers in the streets. In the 1840s, there were places that offered all the oysters you could eat for only six cents, although it was said that the proprietors usually slipped a bad oyster onto the plate to keep customers from eating too many. In 1877, 50,000 oysters a day were sold at New York's Fulton Fish Market, which, even then, was 60 years old. (It was finally torn down in 1969.) The Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant in New York opened in 1913. It still serves oyster stew made according to its original recipe.

Oysters are most often named after the places where they are found. Bluepoint and Cape Cod oysters are from the East Coast of the U.S.; Caraquet and Malpeque are from Eastern Canada; Sydney Rocks are from Australia; and Belons, the most expensive of all oysters, are from the town of the same name in France. The only exception is the Portuguese oyster, which is not from Portugal, but from France.

The Atlantic oyster is also known as Eastern oyster. It has an elongated shell, 2 to 5 inches (5 to 12.5 cm) across, and is found along North America's Atlantic coast. It is sold under different names, depending on where it was harvested. The best-known varieties include the Bluepoint, Cape Cod, Chesapeake and Malpeque. Bluepoint is the name now used generally for any medium-size Atlantic oyster. It is believed that baymen coined the name after noticing "a blue haze" as they returned to the oyster-rich shore of Long Island. The fame of this oyster reached England, where Queen Victoria had them shipped to her. She loved them above any other varieties, and insisted that their rough shells be sanded clean before they were served in Buckingham Palace. See also Olympia oyster.

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