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Clam Toast
1 dozen small clams 1 egg yolk 1/4 cup scalded milk 4 slices buttered toast Salt and pepper Clean the clams; cut them into small pieces and simmer a few minutes. Beat the egg yolk; add slowly to the scalded milk; combine with the clams and just before serving add the seasoning. Pour over buttered toast.
A chafing-dish supper dish of the 1920s: a thin egg-yolk custard bound with clams and spooned over toast. The whole thing hangs on keeping the egg below a simmer.
- Never let it boilOne yolk in a quarter cup of milk is a very lean custard, and it will scramble the moment it approaches a boil. Set the pan over barely steaming water rather than a direct flame, and stir until it just coats the spoon.
- Clam quantityA dozen small clams probably means littlenecks or similar in the shell, yielding perhaps a third of a cup of chopped meat. A 6.5 oz can, drained, is the practical substitute.
- Save the liquorThe recipe says only to clean the clams, but the liquor released when they open is the seasoning. Strain it and add a spoonful or two to the milk, then be sparing with salt at the end.
- "Simmer a few minutes" is generousChopped clam meat needs about a minute in liquid. Two or three minutes and it tightens into rubber, so the clams are better added to the custard than cooked in it.
- Scalded milkHeated to just below boiling, when a ring of bubbles forms at the edge, around 180F. Pre-pasteurised milk no longer needs this step for safety, but the heat is what sets the yolk, so keep it.
- Combining orderBeat the yolk, then add the hot milk to the yolk in a slow stream while whisking, rather than the yolk into the pan. Done as written, the yolk must go in very slowly and off the heat or it will curdle.
- YieldFour slices of toast, so two modest servings as a supper or four small ones. Toast made from a firm white loaf holds the sauce; anything airy collapses.