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Clam Fritters
Put into an earthen dish three spoonfuls of flour, a tablespoonful of yeast powder and two whole eggs; mix this with a little clam juice. Mince a pint of clams, and mix this with nice sweet butter. Put two or three spoonfuls of lard into a shallow frying pan ; when very hot drop your mixture therein by spoonfuls to fry; turn them over after three or four minutes; let them fry a moment longer; then take them out, and after draining them on a cloth, serve. Clam fritters should not be cooked in large masses.
The proportions here are loose even by 1900 standards — three spoonfuls of flour to a pint of clams gives a batter that is mostly clam, bound rather than coated. Expect fritters that hold together barely, which is what the last line is warning about.
- Yeast powderThis is baking powder, sold under names like "yeast powder" well into the early twentieth century. Use 1 teaspoon; a full tablespoon in three spoonfuls of flour would taste metallic.
- Spoonfuls"Spoonfuls" here probably means tablespoons, though the recipe writes "a tablespoonful" when it wants to be exact, so the reading is an inference rather than a certainty. Three tablespoons of flour plus two eggs is a thin batter; add flour by the tablespoon until it just coats the minced clams and holds on the spoon.
- A pint of clamsA pint of shucked clams is roughly a pound of meat; the weight of hardshells in the shell needed to yield that varies with size and can run to several pounds. Shucked chopped clams in tubs work directly, and their liquor is the clam juice called for.
- Sweet butterSimply unsalted butter. A tablespoon or two, softened, folded into the minced clams — not melted, or it separates out in the fat.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified; the clam liquor would have brought some salt of its own. Taste the batter; most clams need pepper and a little salt even so.
- FryingTwo or three spoonfuls of lard in a shallow pan is shallow frying, not deep. Get the fat hot but not smoking (around 365F if you have a thermometer), drop tablespoon-sized portions, and give them 2-3 minutes a side.
- Small portions matterThe closing instruction is the hinge. A large fritter cooks its exterior long before the wet clam centre sets, and clams toughen quickly once overcooked — keep them to about 2 inches across.
- Draining and yieldSubstitute paper towel or a rack for the cloth. Yield depends entirely on how large you drop them; expect a good couple of dozen small fritters from a pint of clams.
- Filed under VegetablesAn artefact of the book's organisation, not a claim about clams.
Clam fritters belong to the Atlantic seaboard cooking of New England and the mid-Atlantic shore towns, where hardshell clams were abundant and cheap. Fritters were a standard American answer to ingredients that could be chopped and bound in batter — corn, oysters, apples, salt cod — and the technique long predates the chemical leavening used here; commercial baking powders spread through home kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century. That this book still calls the leavening "yeast powder" is worth noting: the phrase was giving way to "baking powder" over the same period, though on its own it is weak evidence for the age of the recipe.