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Clam Soup
Heat Twenty-five clams opened raw and chopped fine. One quart of water; boil half-hour then add one pint of milk. Stir a little flour smooth in cold water, put in and let boil; make it the consistency of cream, add butter. Beat two eggs and pour the broth hot over them; add pepper and salt.
— Mrs. Wheeler Howard
A plain milk-and-clam soup thickened twice over, first with a flour slurry and then with beaten egg. The one thing to get right is the egg: the hot soup goes onto the eggs, never the eggs into the pot.
- The clamsThe recipe says only "clams," opened raw; hard-shell clams (littlenecks or cherrystones) are the likely intent, and 25 of them is several pounds in the shell. The liquor released in shucking is worth saving and counting as part of the quart of water.
- The half-hour boilThirty minutes of boiling is far more than chopped clams need and will leave them rubbery. Modern practice is to simmer the water and clam liquor to build a broth, then add the chopped clams for the last two or three minutes only.
- Tempering the eggsBeat the two eggs in a warmed bowl or tureen and pour the near-boiling soup over them in a thin stream while whisking. Do not put the eggs in the pot or return the soup to a boil afterward, or it will curdle into threads.
- The flour slurryNo quantity is given. Flour shaken smooth in a little cold water, added gradually, is the method; start with 2 to 3 tablespoons for this volume and judge by eye against "the consistency of cream." Let it boil to cook out the raw starch taste.
- ButterNo quantity is given; 1 to 2 tablespoons stirred in off the heat is in keeping with the period and with the amount of liquid.
- MilkA pint of whole milk, added after the broth has boiled. Add it warm rather than cold, and watch the bottom of the pot once it is in — milk soup catches easily.
- YieldA quart and a half of liquid before boiling, less whatever evaporates in the half-hour; four servings as a first course. Season at the end, since the clam liquor is already salty.
Clam soups of this kind sit between two older New England traditions: the thin clam broth given to invalids and the milk-thickened chowder of the coast. What marks this one as a late-nineteenth-century household receipt is the double thickening — flour for body, beaten egg for richness — applied to a cheap shore ingredient. The attribution to Mrs. Wheeler Howard is typical of the form: subscription cookbooks of this era were assembled by church and civic societies, each contributor's name printed beneath her dish as both credit and quiet endorsement.