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Clam Fritters (Whole Clams)
Steam the clams until tender, dust them with salt and pepper, roll in the batter, and fry in deep, hot fat until a delicate brown. Drain on brown paper in a hot oven, and serve as hot and as soon as possible.
A bare-bones frying method that assumes you already have a frying batter from elsewhere in the batter-cake section. The clams are cooked twice, so the first cooking has to be brief.
- Steam only until the shells open"Until tender" is misleading — clams are at their best the moment the shells gape, roughly 4 to 6 minutes over an inch of simmering water. Any longer and the second cooking in fat turns them to rubber.
- GritScrub the shells and let live clams sit in cold salted water for 20 to 30 minutes before steaming so they purge sand. Strain and reserve the steaming liquor; a spoonful in the batter is worth more than water.
- Which clamsWhole-clam fritters are usually made with small hard clams (littlenecks or cherrystones) or shucked soft-shell clams. Larger quahogs are generally chopped rather than left whole; the parenthetical "whole clams" in the title most likely distinguishes this version from a minced or chopped one.
- Deep, hot fat365 to 375F. Below that the batter absorbs grease; above it, the coating colors before the interior sets. Fry in small batches so the fat does not drop more than 25 degrees.
- Dry before batteringSteamed clams shed liquid. Pat them dry before the salt and pepper or the batter will slide off in the fat.
- DrainingThe original holds the fritters in a hot oven on brown paper; for modern equipment a wire rack over a sheet pan in a low oven (around 250F) does the job. Paper directly under fried food traps steam; the rack keeps the underside crisp while you finish the batches.
- BatterThe recipe assumes a frying batter given elsewhere. A typical batter of this kind runs to about 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and enough milk for a coating consistency, sometimes with a little baking powder. It should cling to a clam without dripping in a stream.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities. Serve straight from the fat, with lemon or tartar sauce.
Clam fritters belong to the American coastal kitchen from Long Island to Cape Cod, where shellfish were cheap enough to be everyday food well into the twentieth century. Compilations of this kind often carried more than one version — whole clams, minced clams beaten into the batter, and clam "cakes" dropped by the spoonful — and a frying batter of the sort used for corn and apple fritters would have served for all of them, which may explain the placement among batter cakes. The instruction to drain on brown paper reflects a period when grocers' bags were a common absorbent in the kitchen, long before paper toweling; the note to serve "as hot and as soon as possible" is the one piece of advice in the recipe that has not aged at all.