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Clam Juice and Lemon
To four tablespoonfuls of clam juice add two dashes of lemon juice and a little celery salt. Fill up the glass with hot water.
A hot savoury restorative from the sickroom chapter, closer to a cup of broth than to anything mixed at a bar. It is simple enough that the only real questions are what clam juice meant and how strong the result should be.
- Clam juiceIn 1914 this meant the strained liquor from steamed clams, or bottled clam broth, which was a commercial article of the period. Bottled clam juice from the supermarket is the direct descendant and works as written; salt levels vary between brands and against fresh liquor, so taste before adding anything.
- Celery saltThen as now a blend of ground celery seed and salt. With bottled clam juice the drink can easily go over-salted, so start with a pinch and adjust.
- Two dashesA dash in period drink books is loose, roughly an eighth of a teaspoon from a shaker-top bottle. For lemon juice read it as a scant quarter teaspoon total, adjusted to taste.
- Proportions and yieldFour tablespoons is a quarter cup. The recipe specifies no glass size, only "the glass"; in an ordinary tumbler that gives a broth diluted roughly one part clam to two or three parts water, light enough for a weak stomach.
- Hot water, not boilingThe recipe specifies only hot water; water just off the boil is a reasonable reading.
- GlasswareThin glass can crack when filled with very hot water. Use a heatproof glass or a cup.
This comes from the invalid-drinks section of a 1914 collection of non-alcoholic recipes, published at a time when the temperance movement was strong and "on the water wagon" was the standing joke for abstinence. Such books had two jobs: to give teetotal hosts something to serve, and to offer an alternative to the medicinal glass of wine, brandy toddy or beef-and-port that had long figured in nursing practice. Clam broth was promoted in this period as a light nourishing drink for the convalescent, in much the same role as beef tea, and hot savoury cups of this kind were also sold at soda fountains. The celery salt is characteristic of an era when celery preparations were widely advertised as calming to the nerves.