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CHAPTER XXXVI: Mary
Another method of preparing clam soup, if needed quickly, is to heat the clam broth to a boiling point, add the clams cut fine, season, and pour into the tureen over 1 eggs beaten up with boiling milk.-MARY J. LINCOLN.
Onion Chowder. 3 quarts boiling water, 2 cupfuls minced onion, 1 quart potatoes cut in dice, 3 teaspoonfuls salt, teaspoonful pepper, 3 tablespoonfuls butter, 1 tablespoonful fine herbs.
Cook the onion and butter together for half an hour, but slowly, so the onion will not brown. At the end of this time, add the boiling water, potatoes, salt, and pepper, and cook one hour longer, then add the fine herbs, and serve. -MARIA PAR- LOA.
Sportsman's Broth (English recipe).
Take grouse, partridge, or any other game you have; cut in small joints, put them into a pot with water and plenty of vegetables whole. Let it stew slowly four or five hours; then take the best pieces you have saved out, season them and toss in a little flour; brown over a quick fire, and add to the strained stock with 12 small onions, 2 heads celery, sliced, and half a cabbage shredded fine, to stew slowly till tender. Half an hour before serving, add 6 potatoes cut in slices.
Clam Chowder. peck clams in shells, 1 quart potatoes sliced thin, A 2-inch cube fat salt pork, 1 teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful white pepper, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 quart milk, 6 butter crackers.
Four soups from a single page, printed with the fractions dropped by the scanner and, in the case of the clam chowder, with no method at all. Read the ingredient lists as approximations and work from the technique.
- Missing fractionsThe original type used fraction marks that have not survived transcription: the onion chowder's "teaspoonful pepper," the clam chowder's "teaspoonful white pepper" and the "peck clams" all almost certainly began with a fraction, though what the fractions were cannot be recovered from this page (the stray "A" before the salt pork is another casualty). Season by taste rather than by these numbers.
- A peck of clamsA peck is 8 dry quarts; if the lost fraction was a half, that is about 4 dry quarts of clams in the shell, several pounds of hard-shell clams and enough for both meat and broth. Steam them open in an inch of water, strain the liquor through cloth to catch grit, and use it as the base.
- The clam chowder has no methodOnly the ingredient list was set on this page; the instructions presumably continued on the following page. The usual period sequence is to render the diced salt pork, layer potatoes and clams with the crackers, add the strained clam liquor, and finish with scalded milk off the heat.
- Clams and heatThe hinge on both clam dishes. Shucked clams need one or two minutes in hot liquid; boiled longer they tighten into rubber. Add them at the very end, after the potatoes are already tender.
- The egg liaisonBeating the eggs with boiling milk and pouring hot broth over them thickens the soup without curdling it, but the mixture must actually get hot — around 160F — to be safe, and it must not return to the boil or it will scramble. Serve immediately; it will not hold or reheat.
- Fine herbs"Fine herbs" is usually taken as fines herbes: chervil, parsley, tarragon and chives, chopped fine, though period American usage was looser and could mean any mixture of chopped herbs. A tablespoon of chopped parsley with a little tarragon and chive is a fair substitute. Added at the end, as instructed, so they keep their scent.
- Onion chowder timingThe half hour of slow cooking in butter is a sweat, not a browning — keep the pan barely bubbling and covered. The full hour after the water goes in is longer than potatoes need; expect them to break down and thicken the soup, which is the point. The quantities make roughly a gallon, so it serves a large table.
- Sportsman's broth and gameGrouse and partridge are wild-shot in this recipe and may carry shot; check the joints before browning. Farmed guinea fowl, pheasant or a stewing hen gives the same result. Four or five hours is a stock-making simmer, appropriate for old wild birds and generous for anything bought today — three hours will do.
Both signed recipes come from women who shaped how Americans learned to cook: Mary J. Lincoln, first principal of the Boston Cooking School and author of the 1884 book that Fannie Farmer's famous volume succeeded, and Maria Parloa, a Boston School lecturer and prolific writer for the domestic press. Their names attached to a recipe were a selling point, which is why a general household compendium like this one borrows them by name. The clam dishes belong to the New England shore tradition, where a chowder is built in layers over rendered salt pork and thinned with milk rather than the tomato of Manhattan practice; "chowder" is generally traced to the French chaudi e</fishing crew cooked in. The Sportsman's Broth is set apart as an English recipe and reads like one or for for for for for for.