Part 4: John Adams’ Oyster Rolls

Before delving into this dish, I’m going to take a brief historical detour. While this culinary journey is inspired by a book I was recently given just recently, another book I love to read and re-read is Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance. (Of course, John Adams was our first Vice President before his single term as President). This book chronicles the well-known and not-so-well-known Vice Presidents in our country’s history and is both fascinating and hilarious.

John Adams was the first of many Vice Presidents who did not hide his misery holding this high office (FDR’s Veep during his first two terms was former Speaker of the House John Nance Garner, who famously said the vice presidency was “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”) Adams said the role of Vice President was “laborious,” “wholly insignificant,” and elaborated, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” (Tell us how you really feel, John). In his defense, though, when he initially took office, Congress hadn’t authorized a salary for the Vice President so he was the first and only (to my knowledge) pro bono Veep. I’ll end this brief detour by suggesting, if you haven’t seen the HBO series John Adams with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, it’s fantastic.

Back to the cooking, here’s my attempt to recreate President John Adams’ Oyster Rolls:

When I looked at this recipe, I realized I’ve never cooked oysters before. I’ve cooked lots of seafood and shellfish, but never oysters. I love raw oysters and generally trust professionals with these things. But I picked up half a pint of oysters and the rest of the ingredients, and invited two friends over to partake (I didn’t think I’d want to eat all of these myself and it was safe to assume these wound not re-heat well).

I don’t have step-by-step photos for this recipe because I was too busy talking and cooking to pick up my phone. To summarize, though, I separated the oysters from the liquid in the container, then in a pan heated the liquid along with some butter, nutmeg, and mace until combined, then added the oysters until the edges had just curled (less than 5 minutes). I then placed the oysters and some of the juice from the pan into three brioche buns and put them in the oven at 375 for about 8–10 minutes to cook through. I removed them from the oven, topped them with some chopped parsley, and we all chowed down.

We all deemed this a success. The seemingly odd combination of shellfish with wintery spices like nutmeg and mace turned out to be really tasty. However, if made again we would probably tweak by using more oysters (or better balancing the oyster/bread ratio), and probably halve the amount of oyster liquid in the pan and add more butter to make the coating a little more luscious and creamy.

Overall, I can see why President Adams enjoyed these briny and flavorful rolls and I will definitely make them again with some adjustments.

Next Up: John Adams’ Beggar’s Pudding.