Though a chilled oyster sliding down your throat and followed with cold white wine seems perfectly apropos for the summer months, it was only recently that the old tradition “only eat oysters in a month with “R” in it” has been bucked. It’s oyster season, and winter family dinners of my youth were often trimmed with fried oysters. I thought them more akin to battered chunks of tire, barely edible when draped with ketchup.

Fifty Years in  Maryland Kitchen, first published in 1873, offers two recipes for oyster pie. Imagine counting out those 125 oysters, and how meaty they must have been before infections and over fishing blighted the Chesapeake Bay.