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Clams a la Newburg
1 pint clams 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne 3 tablespoons Sherry or Madeira wine 1/2 cup thin cream Yolks 3 eggs Clean clams, remove soft parts, and finely chop hard parts. Melt butter, add chopped clams, seasonings, and wine. Cook eight minutes, add soft part of clams, and cream. Cook two minutes, then add egg yolks slightly beaten, diluted with some of the hot sauce.
A short, rich shellfish entree built on the same principle as Lobster Newburg: a butter-and-wine base finished with cream and egg yolks. The whole dish turns on how the yolks are handled.
- Never let it boil once the yolks go inThe yolks thicken the sauce at roughly 160-170F and curdle above about 180F. Temper them with a few spoonfuls of the hot sauce as directed, return the pan to low heat, and stir until it coats the spoon.
- "1 pint clams" means shucked meatsThat is a pint of drained clam meats, not clams in the shell, roughly 1 lb of meats. The number of clams needed depends entirely on their size.
- Hard parts and soft partsThe "hard parts" are the tough adductor muscle, foot and mantle rim; the "soft parts" are the bellies. Chopping and pre-cooking the tough portions for eight minutes while adding the tender bellies at the end is the point of the two-stage method, and it still works.
- Two minutes is correctDo not extend the cooking of the bellies past two minutes. Clam meat firms and turns rubbery quickly.
- Thin creamPeriod "thin cream" is roughly today's light cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat; half-and-half is leaner and will give a thinner sauce. Heavy cream will work and gives a heavier sauce.
- The wineA dry or medium-dry Sherry, or a Sercial or Verdelho Madeira. Cream Sherry and sweet Madeira will push the sauce sugary against the clam liquor.
- Seasoning and liquorSalt the sauce late. Clams and their liquor are already saline, and half a teaspoon may be more than the dish needs.
- Yield and servingServes three or four as an entree. Newburg preparations of this era were sent out on toast points, in puff-pastry shells, or over plain boiled rice.
Newburg sauce - butter, wine, cream and egg yolks - is generally traced to Delmonico's in New York in the 1870s, where it was made with lobster and named for a patron; the story of the name's alteration from "Wenberg" is traditional rather than documented. By the time cookery schools were teaching it around 1900 the formula had become a template applied to almost any shellfish, and clams were among the cheaper options. A pint of shucked clams cost a fraction of a lobster, and the two-stage treatment here suits the clam's awkward anatomy: the tough muscle chopped and stewed until it gives up flavour, the delicate bellies dropped in at the last moment. The result is closer to a chafing-dish supper than a formal entree.