May 23

Anniversary of John D. Rockefeller's Death
 
 

John Davison Rockefeller, a financial genius with a talent for double entry bookkeeping and bribery, founded the Standard Oil Company. By 1896, Rockefeller shed all of his policy involvement in the day-to-day affairs of Standard Oil but retained his nominal title as president until 1911 when Standard Oil was convicted in Federal Court of monopolistic practices and broken up. However, he kept his stock which was a principal source of his wealth. 

It was often said that Rockefeller had the best state and United States senators that money could buy. His business deals and payoffs were a national scandal, but by the time he was thirty-three, Rockefeller owned ninety percent of all the American refineries, and all of the main pipelines and oil cars of the Pennsylvania railroad, and was the richest man and first billionaire in America.

By the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller's remaining fortune, largely tied up in permanent family trusts, was estimated at $1.4 billion. Rockefeller's net worth over the last decades of his life would easily place him among the very wealthiest persons in history.
 

John D. Rockefeller

Rockefeller like many of his nineteenth-century financial counterparts eventually made his peace with God for the immorality of his business practices and set up the Rockefeller Foundation which helped disperse part of the immense fortune that he had created, thereby rationalizing in his own mind that he had found a way to repay the money that he had often unethically taken from the public. His philanthropy and wealth became legend and the name Rockefeller was synonymous with extravagance and luxury, although his personal lifestyle was very simple.

Rockefeller passed into popular culture when the popular Oysters Rockefeller was named for him in 1899 by the great New Orleans Restaurateur and chef Jules Alciatore who founded the New Orleans institution Antoine's. The dish was a result of a shortage of escargot being shipped from France to the United States. Jules created an oyster dish as a substitute, an unusual choice because oysters were not very popular at that time, but they were plentiful. Jules called the new dish Oysters Rockefeller because he wanted an appropriate term to symbolize the richness of the sauce. Oysters Rockefeller are now served in nearly every major restaurant in the city, although Antoine's has always guarded the secret of the sauce and claims that no other restaurant has been able to successfully duplicate the recipe which was passed down from Jules to his children.

There are many knock-off versions of  the original Oysters Rockefeller, many of which use spinach.  However, there was no spinach in the original Antoine's sauce. Spinach was one of the alleged ingredients
intended to mislead the competition.  Another ingredient in the original recipe was  absinthe, an anise-flavored spirit, also known as "wormwood" and "the Green Fairy." Absinthe had been banned since 1925 in most European nations and the United States because of exaggerated claims of psychoactive properties and causing blindness. However, there is no medical evidence that it is any more dangerous than any other liquor or spirit. A revival of absinthe began in the 1990s, when countries in the European Union began to reauthorize its manufacture and sale. Pernod is substituted for absinthe in the following recipe which also makes use of a food processor which was not around when Jules created the recipe.

Oysters Rockefeller
 
Special Equipment
 
Large paella (or similarly-sized) pan
 
Ingredients
 

2 doz oysters
4 lbs rock salt
1 cup butter chopped in 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup chopped scallions including greens
1/2 cup freshly chopped watercress
1/3 cup freshly chopped celery leaves including top
   stems
1/3 cup freshly chopped Italian flat leaf parsley

 

1 TB chervil
1 TB tarragon
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp freshly ground anise seed
1/4 tsp Tabasco
4 TB oyster liquid (or clam juice)
1/4 cup Pernod
1/2 cup home made French bread crumbs

 
Instructions
 
  1. Preheat oven to 425º F.
  2. Fill a large paella pan with rock salt (or individual pie pans for individual servings).
  3. Wash and shuck oysters, retaining oyster liquid. Press a drained oyster in its half shell into salt.
  4. Combine all other ingredients in a food processor fitted with a metal chopping blade and pulse for a few seconds until a thick sauce is made. Place sauce in pastry bag fitted with a 1" tube and pipe over oysters.
  5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until sauce bubbles and begins to brown. Remove from oven.

Serves 4