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Scalloped Clams
Chop 25 clams fine and season with red pepper and salt to taste. Blend together 1 tablespoon each Crisco and flour, and cook with 1 cup liquid, half milk and half clam juice, with a tiny pinch of soda, and stir until smooth and creamy. Add chopped clams with 1 beaten egg. Have ready large clam or scallop shells, Crisco on inside and fill with clam mixture, smoothing over with silver knife blade. Arrange on baking dish and bake about 6 minutes, or until well browned. Garnish with parsley and pass sliced lemons with them.
A shellfish gratin baked in shells, built on a small white sauce. The recipe assumes a very hot oven and a cook who already knows how to shuck a clam.
- The hinge: fill the shells hotSix minutes will brown the top but will not cook a cold filling through. Add the chopped clams and egg to the sauce off the heat while it is still steaming, fill immediately, and bake at once.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, and browning in six minutes implies a hot oven: something in the region of 450F, or the upper third of the oven under a hot element. At a moderate heat the surface is unlikely to colour before the filling overcooks.
- How many clamsTwenty-five clams in the shell, most likely littlenecks or cherrystones, giving perhaps 1 to 1 1/4 cups chopped meat. Reserve the liquor as it is shucked and strain it; the recipe's cup of half-and-half liquid means you need half a cup of it.
- CriscoThe book is a Crisco promotional volume, so the shortening appears everywhere. Butter works better here in both the roux and the greasing of the shells, tablespoon for tablespoon.
- Red pepperThis is cayenne, not paprika and not crushed chilli flakes. A pinch is enough; clam juice is already assertive and salt should be added last, after tasting.
- The pinch of sodaNot leavening. A trace of baking soda buffers the acidity of the clam liquor so the milk does not curdle when the two are cooked together. Keep it genuinely tiny or the sauce takes on a soapy flavour.
- Silver knife bladeSilver was specified because ordinary carbon steel discoloured and tainted acidic foods. Any stainless blade or small offset spatula does the same job now.
- Shells and substitutesLarge clam or scallop shells should be scrubbed and boiled before first use. Small ramekins, gratin dishes, or a single shallow baking dish all work; set shells on a bed of coarse salt or crumpled foil so they sit level.
- YieldRoughly six large shells, depending on their size; a first course for about six.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s and 1920s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks to use a new product, in this case Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening Procter & Gamble introduced in 1911. That is why shortening turns up in a roux and greasing a scallop shell, jobs traditionally given to butter. The dish itself is older than the book and thoroughly American coastal: scalloped clams, clam pie and their relations were standard on Atlantic tables wherever hardshell clams could be dug, and baking a creamed mixture back in the shell was an economical way to stretch a modest quantity of shellfish. The single beaten egg does the work of holding the filling together as it browns.