Clam Fritters
2 egg yolks well beaten + cup milk 1 tablespoon olive oil cup flour salt, pepper, cayenne 2 egg whites stiffly beaten 1 tablespoon lemon juice Combine ingredients in order given; let stand ten minutes. Remove clams from shell, cut off heads, cover with batter, and fry until golden brown in hot fat. Drain on brown paper. As clams contain so much water, only a few should be put into the fat at once.
Oysters in batter may be prepared in the same way as Clam Fritters. 1 quart scallops salt and pepper, 1 egg
A thin egg batter for whole soft-shell clams, deep-fried in small batches. The batter quantities suit roughly a pint of shucked clams.
- Batter proportionsThe milk and flour amounts have lost their fractions in this printing. A workable frying batter of this type is about 1/2 cup milk to 3/4 cup flour with two yolks, the whites folded in last; adjust to a consistency that coats a clam without sliding off.
- Fold the whites in lastThe instruction to combine "in order given" matters: the stiff whites and lemon juice go in at the end, and only a few strokes. Overmixing collapses the foam and you lose the light shell that distinguishes a fritter from a heavy coating.
- The ten-minute restThis lets the flour hydrate so the batter clings. Do not rest it much longer than that, or the beaten whites will begin to deflate.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only "hot fat" and gives no figure. For fritters of this kind a range of about 365-375F is the usual modern equivalent: below that the batter absorbs grease; much above it and the coating colors before the clam inside is hot.
- Cut off headsThe "head" is the dark tip of the siphon or neck on a soft-shell clam, which is tough. Modern practice is also to strip the leathery membrane from the neck. Small hard-shell clams can be used whole.
- A few at a timeThe warning about water content is the hinge of the recipe. Clams shed liquid into the fat, dropping the temperature and causing violent spattering. Fry four or five at a time and let the fat recover between batches.
- Cooking timeSixty to ninety seconds is enough for a clam. "Golden brown" arrives fast at this size, and clams turn rubbery quickly with further cooking.
- DrainingPrinted brown paper is not used for food today. Drain on a rack set over a sheet pan, which keeps the underside from steaming soft.
Clam fritters belong to the New England shore-dinner tradition, where soft-shell clams dug from tidal flats were battered and fried at summer clam shacks and church suppers. Lowney's was a Boston chocolate and cocoa manufacturer whose name the cook book carried, and the general chapters reflect the plain Massachusetts cooking of the period; the note that oysters may be treated the same way appears in the fish chapter.