Oysters au Gratin

As exquisite as raw oysters are, they were also very popular cooked in the Edwardian era, and a large number of such recipes appear in cookbooks of the time (quite a lot involving Champagne). They were eaten as canapés and hors d’oeuvres and also made an appearance in the savory course at the end of the meal. They had once been so plentiful that they were eaten by everyone, and although they were becoming scarcer, and therefore more expensive, by the twentieth century, they were still eaten