Home › Soups › Clam Soup with Poached Eggs
Clam Soup with Poached Eggs
1 quart clams 2 tablespoons flour 4 cups milk 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 slice onion 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/3 cup butter Few gratings nutmeg White 1 egg Clean and pick over clams, using three-fourths cup cold water; reserve liquor. Put aside soft part of clams; finely chop hard part, add to liquor, bring gradually to boiling-point, strain through cheesecloth, and thicken with butter and flour cooked together. Scald milk with onion, remove onion, add milk, seasonings, and soft part of clams. Bring to boiling-point and pour over whites of eggs beaten stiff.
A New England milk-based clam soup of the Fannie Farmer school, built on the old habit of separating the tender bellies from the tough muscle and mantle. The soft parts want almost no cooking at all.
- The hinge: two minutes for the soft partsThe chopped hard parts can simmer with the liquor to give up their flavour, but the soft bellies go in at the end and need only to heat through — a minute or two once the milk reaches a bare boil. Held longer they shrink and turn rubbery.
- A quart of clamsThis means a quart of shucked clams with their liquor, not a quart measured in the shell; in shell that would be a considerably greater weight. The hard/soft distinction points to hard-shell clams such as quahogs or large cherrystones.
- Hard part, soft partOn a quahog, the "soft part" is the belly and surrounding body; the "hard part" is the tough adductor muscle and the rim of the mantle. Snip the hard pieces away with scissors and chop them fine — they will not tenderise in soup.
- Washing and the liquorThe three-quarters cup of cold water is for rinsing grit off the clams; it goes into the pot with the natural liquor. Strain through cheesecloth: clam liquor carries sand, and settling alone may not clear it.
- Scalding the milkScald means bringing the milk just short of the boil, until it steams and shivers at the edges (commonly reckoned at around 180F), not to a rolling boil. The onion slice is steeped in it and discarded, so the flavour is faint by design.
- Butter and flourOne-third cup butter to 2 tablespoons flour is a very rich, loose roux by modern proportions; cook it a minute without colour, then whisk in the hot strained clam liquor. The soup will be thin — this is a cream soup, not a chowder.
- SaltClam liquor is itself salty and clams vary a great deal, so taste after the liquor goes in before committing to the full 1 1/2 teaspoons, and hold back some if using salted butter.
- The beaten whitesThe stiff whites are put in the warmed tureen or individual bowls and the boiling soup poured over, so they set into soft floating clouds. They are only lightly cooked by the heat of the liquid; if that concerns you, or you are serving anyone who should avoid undercooked egg, leave them out.
- YieldSomething over 6 cups of finished soup — 4 cups of milk plus the wash water, strained liquor and clams — serving four to six as a first course.