Salt Pepper
Clean clams, drain from their liquor, and chop. Beat eggs until light, add milk and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder, then add chopped clams, and season highly with salt and pepper. Drop by spoonfuls, and fry in deep fat. Drain on brown paper, and serve at once on a folded napkin.
A plain clam fritter batter of the sort that turns up all along the American coast in turn-of-the-century books. The instructions survive intact; the quantities do not, so treat the method as the authority and scale the batter yourself.
- No quantities givenThe text names eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, clams, salt and pepper but no amounts. A workable fritter batter of this era runs roughly one cup flour to one teaspoon baking powder, one egg and about half a cup milk, with a cup of chopped clams folded in; the batter should hold its shape on the spoon rather than pour.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe does not say. Deep fat in this period was usually lard or a beef-suet blend, and period books commonly judge it by a cube of bread browning in about a minute, roughly 365-375F by modern reckoning. Below that the fritters soak; above it the outside colours before the centre sets.
- Drop size and donenessKeep the spoonfuls small, no larger than a walnut, and fry in batches so the fat does not drop below temperature. Three to four minutes gets a fritter cooked through to the centre; a large mounded spoonful will still be raw batter inside when the crust is dark.
- The clamsHard-shell quahogs or chowder clams are the likely intent, though the recipe does not specify. Shucked clams sold in tubs work and are already drained. The recipe says to drain the clams from their liquor; save it for chowder rather than adding it here, since it thins the batter.
- Chop, do not mincePieces about the size of a pea keep some texture. Clams run to rubber quickly, and the brief fry is the only cooking they need.
- Season before frying"Season highly" is not rhetorical: clams lose salt in the batter and fried food tastes flat when underseasoned. Fry one test fritter and adjust before committing the batch.
- Draining and servingBrown paper was the standard drain; paper towels do the same work. The folded napkin was a Victorian serving conceit that absorbed steam and kept the crust from softening on the platter -- a wire rack achieves it now.
- YieldA batch built on one cup of flour gives roughly eighteen to twenty small fritters, enough for four as a first course.