Pour into your inner saucepan a cup of hot water, another of milk,
and one of cream, with a little salt. Set into a kettle of hot water
until it boils, when stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little
salt, with white pepper. Take from the fire and add two heaping
tablespoonfuls of arrow-root, rice-flour, or corn-starch, wet with
cold milk. By this time your shells should be washed and buttered, and
a fine oyster laid within each. Of course, it is _selon les régles_
to use oyster-shells for this purpose; but you will find clam-shells
more roomy and manageable, because more regular in shape. Range these
closely in a large baking-pan, propping them with clean pebbles or
fragments of shell, if they do not seem inclined to retain their
contents. Stir the cream _very_ hard and fill up each shell with a
spoon, taking care not to spill any in the pan. Bake five or six
minutes in a hot oven after the shells become warm. Serve on the shell.
Some substitute oyster-liquor for the water in the mixture, and use all
milk instead of cream.