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Clam Pie
3 doz. clams 1 cup clam juice 1 cup milk 1 cup cream 3 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons shortening 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 small onion, grated biscuit shortcake grated cheese Wash and steam open clams, chop them coarsely, then set to drain. Take 1 cup clam juice, milk and cream; heat and thicken with shortening and flour rubbed to paste, add pepper and grated onion and stir in clams. Have ready biscuit shortcake, split and butter it well, fill with clam mixture, cover and butter top and sprinkle thickly with grated cheese. Dust with little cayenne and brown quickly in oven. Serve at once. Serves six.
A creamed-clam filling served on a split biscuit round rather than in a pastry shell. The whole thing hinges on keeping the clams out of the heat: they are already cooked when they open, and a second long cooking turns them to rubber.
- Add the clams last, off the heatBuild and thicken the sauce first, then fold the chopped clams in and assemble immediately. The few minutes in the hot oven is all the further cooking they should get.
- What kind of clamThree dozen means hard-shell clams -- quahogs, cherrystones or littlenecks -- which will yield roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of chopped meat and more than the single cup of liquor called for. Steam them in a covered pot with a splash of water just until they gape, no longer.
- Strain the liquorClam juice from steaming carries sand. Pour it through a fine sieve or a coffee filter and leave the last spoonful behind in the pot.
- ShorteningIn a book of this period this means lard or a vegetable shortening such as Crisco. Butter can be substituted for a richer sauce; the quantity, 3 tablespoons to 3 tablespoons flour and 3 cups of liquid, gives a thin sauce, about the thickness of heavy cream.
- Biscuit shortcakeProbably not individual biscuits but a single round of rich baking-powder biscuit dough, about an inch thick and 8 to 9 inches across, baked and then split horizontally like a strawberry shortcake. The recipe gives no baking directions; a hot oven, around 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, suits such a round.
- Brown quicklyThe recipe names no temperature; "brown quickly" implies a hot oven, roughly 450F in modern terms, for just long enough to melt and colour the cheese -- five minutes or less. The object is the top, not the filling.
- Salt and cayenneNo salt is listed; the clam liquor is salty on its own, so taste the sauce before assembling. The cayenne is left to judgement -- a scant 1/8 teaspoon dusted over the cheese is plenty.
- ServingSix portions, cut in wedges, and it will not wait. The biscuit softens under the sauce within a few minutes, which is why the original says serve at once.