Shellfish
Select plump clams, dry them on a towel, roll in cracker crumbs, dip in egg, again in crumbs, and fry in hot fat; lay a sheet of paper in a colander and put the clams on this as fast as taken up; serve on a napkin.
Clam Fritters.
Either whole clams or chopped ones may be used. Prepare a fritter batter, stir in the clams, using considerable clam liquor in making the batter. If whole clams are used, the large ones are best, having one in each fritter; when chopped clams are used, the fritters may be made any size. Drain, and serve on a napkin.
Two related preparations run together in one paragraph: crumbed fried clams, then clam fritters. Both are quick-fry jobs where the main risk is overcooking.
- The hinge: fry fastClams tighten and turn rubbery within a minute or two of hitting the fat. Breaded clams need about 60-90 seconds at 375F, until the crumb is gold; fritters take 2-3 minutes because the batter, not the clam, sets the timing.
- "Hot fat" means 375F"Hot fat" - the recipe does not say how hot, or which fat. For deep frying of this kind 365-375F is the usual modern range; use a thermometer and fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs came from plain soda or water crackers, crushed fine and dry. Saltines work; panko does not give the same close, sandy crust. Season the crumbs, as the recipe leaves them bare.
- Which clamsFor breading, soft-shell (steamer) clams shucked whole are the traditional New England choice; for fritters, quahogs or other hard clams, chopped, stand up better. Canned chopped clams with their liquor are a reasonable substitute in the fritter batter.
- Clam liquor and salt"Considerable clam liquor" is genuinely vague; start by replacing about half the liquid in your fritter batter with strained liquor and adjust. It is salty, so hold back added salt until the batter is mixed.
- GritThe recipe says nothing about purging. Rinse shucked clams and check the necks and bellies of soft-shells; sand in a fritter is not recoverable.
- DrainingPaper in a colander is exactly right in principle, but modern practice is a wire rack over a sheet pan, which keeps the underside crisp. "Serve on a napkin" means a folded linen cloth on the platter to absorb the last of the fat, a presentation commonly called for with fried food in cookery of the period.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. As a rough guide, a quart of shucked clams will serve about four either way, and a fritter batter built on one cup of flour will take roughly a cup of chopped clams.
Fried clams and clam fritters both belong to the Atlantic coast kitchen, where clams were cheap, abundant and dug rather than bought. Fritters of this type -- chopped shellfish folded into a batter slack with their own liquor -- appear in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century and are close cousins of the clam cake still sold in Rhode Island. The crumbed-and-fried version points forward to the shore-dinner fried clam that became a New England institution in the twentieth century; the crumb-egg-crumb coating and the draining on paper in a colander are ordinary frying technique of the period applied to a local ingredient. That it sits in a general household volume rather than a cookery manual proper is a reminder of how such books worked: practical shellfish handling alongside laundry hints and furniture polish, all filed under the general management of a house.