A few years ago I picked up Party Cookbook (Sydney: Paul
Hamlyn, 1971) in a south coast op shop:
You can’t buy every kitschy 70s cookbook you find in op shops, but I
bought this one because it was Australian, each chapter was written by a
different contemporary “party expert” and because of this:
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| Summer Buffet Dinner Party |
This is basically my ego ideal. I believe the hostess pictured is the author of the chapter, Gretta Anna
Teplitzky, who ran a cooking school in the 1960s out of a purpose-designed wing of her Harry Seidler house (next door to Rose Seidler House).
One of the chapters is on the “After Theatre Party”, by
Oscar Mendelsohn. The recipes include the usual suspects - Welsh Rarebit,
Angels on Horseback, fiddly things with anchovies. There’s also a faint
Rosemary’s Baby edge, with a recipe not only for “Devilled Poultry Wings” but also “Satanic Sardines”.
Nothing prepares you however for Osborne Oysters:
The wonder of this combination. It’s like something from the
Futurist Cookbook or a surrealist joke (“An oyster, some swiss cheese and a banana walk into a bar...”). Every time me and Mr Batsy look at it,
we say, “That’s so crazy we have to do it”. But every time we actually have
oysters in the house, we say, “That’s so crazy we can’t possibly do it”.
Oysters are an expensive delicacy and not to be treated lightly or with
Osbornesque abandon.
Osborne oysters are not a “thing”, they are definitely the devising of Oscar Mendelsohn. No biographical details are
given about any of the authors in the book, but having done a little research, Oscar
Mendelsohn can only be “polymath,
bon vivant and public analyst” Oscar Adolf Mendelsohn (1896–1978). I can only recommend you read the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry because I certainly can't do him justice. He is
quite the mouthful. He trained as a chemist in London, specialising in “the chemistry of espionage” (that info from here), but developed
an interest in food science and worked as a consultant and industry
representative in this area. He was also at different points a forensic
chemist, a graphologist and a grazier. Outside of working hours he was a
composer, choirmaster, unsuccessful National party candidate and a serious
drinker with a lot to say on the subject. His publications in this area
include The Earnest
Drinker (George
Allen & Unwin, 1950), Drinking with Pepys (St Martin’s Press, 1963),
The Dictionary of Drinkers and Drinking (MacMillan, 1956), From
Cellar and Kitchen (Melbourne, 1968) and one listing over a 1000 synonyms
for “drunk”. Closer to food home is A
Salute to Onions: Some Reflections on Cookery... and Cooks (Hawthorne Books, 1966). He
was a state president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers. He wrote a book
arguing that “Waltzing Matilda” was in fact written by a Townsville church
organist. It goes on and on, you get the idea.
According to the ADB, Oscar Mendelsohn had “a national reputation for
promoting civilized attitudes to eating and drinking”, which explains his
inclusion in Party Cookbook, but he
was also “a man who flourished on controversy and enjoyed being a lone voice”,
which gives us more insight into Osborne Oysters.
I know what you're thinking: who was Osborne? Well, when Oscar Mendelsohn was studying at the University of
Melbourne, “he was impressed by Professor W. A. Osborne, ‘the first true food
scientist I met’”. I won’t even start on W. A. Osborne (1873–1967)
(“In 1912 Osborne gave up smoking so he could afford an antique Roman marble
bust of Marcus Aurelius.”), but you’d have to assume he put the “Osborne” into
“Osborne Oysters”, whether as their inventor or inspiration.
I
know what you’re thinking: did I make the damn things? I did:
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| No "bubble" in cheese as our griller doesn't work, we just hot ovened it. |
And?
Going
on the recipe and the biographies, you'd think Osborne Oysters was just the
nonsense of a couple of drunk food scientists, or possibly a triumph of proto-molecular
gastronomy. Less glamorously, I think it’s just a little cheesy window into Australia in the 1970s, the cocktail
correlate of a tuna casserole with a tin of pineapple in it. I had expected the
ingredients to sit randomly alongside each other in the mouth: oyster + banana
+ cheese + why? But they did in fact coalesce into some sort of “whole”: a
“tropical” core of banana wrapped in the nutty dairy comfort of Swiss cheese
with the oyster only appearing as a sort of faint halo of “grown-upness” in the
overall flavour profile.* It does nothing for the oyster and I would never again
do it to an oyster, but I felt I “understood” it as an expression of a time
when tropical was sophisticated and when in doubt, cover with cheese. If I
closed my eyes I could see the floral prints, the soup bowls with the handles,
the orange formica. I enjoyed the trip, in a patronising sort of way, and I think Oscar Mendelsohn would be a fun host.
* Mr Batsy
just thought it was “awful”.
