Download The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell AudioBook Free
When Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $24 in 1626 he showed his shrewdness by also buying the oyster beds off tiny, near by Oyster Island, renamed Ellis Island in 1770. From your Minuit purchase until pollution finally destroyed the beds in the 1920s, New York was a city known because of its oysters, especially in the late 1800s, when Europe and America enjoyed a decades-long oyster craze. In a dubious endorsement, William Makepeace Thackeray said that eating a New York oyster was like eating your baby. Travellers to New York were also keen to see the famous New York oyster houses. Although some were known for their elegance, due to a longstanding belief in the aphrodisiac quality of oysters, these were often associated with prostitution. In 1842, when the novelist Charles Dickens arrived in New York, he cannot conceal his eagerness to find and go through the fabled oyster cellars of New York City's slums. The Big Oyster is the story of an city and of a global trade.Filled up with cultural, social and culinary insight - as well as recipes, maps, drawings and photographs - this is history at its most engrossing, entertaining and delicious.
