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From Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), a recipe for “oyster sauce”:

…put in the oysters, which should be previously bearded, if you wish the sauce to be really nice…

…A more economical sauce may be made by using a smaller quantity of oysters, and not bearding them before adding them to the sauce…

In this context, what is meant by “bearding” the oysters? Oysters I have met do not, as a rule, have beards, and even mussel-like beards would not be relevant to the quality of the sauce given that the oysters are already shucked.

Sneftel
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1 Answers1

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The native British oyster is Ostrea edulis, which indeed doesn't have a byssus, nor do any of the other oyster species I think.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary has a lot of meanings for the word "Beard" which includes one specific for oysters, with a couple of quotes from texts on cooking:

I.5.b. The gills of an oyster. 1649

1654 Scald your Oysters, plucking off the beards, and dry them. J. Cooper, Art of Cookery 102

2011 For presentation sake, trim the dark ruffled beards from the oysters using scissors. D. Macomber, Christmas Cookbook 103

So, it would seem that the beard of an oyster is the gills, which are the bits labeled below, and should be dark compared to the flesh:

Oyster anatomy

Image attribution: East Hampton Town; http://ehamptonny.gov/156/American-Oysters. Note: this is the American oyster Crassostrea virginica, but the structures are more or less the same as in Ostrea edulis

You can view the text of Jos Cooper's Art of Cookery at the Bodleian Library

bob1
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