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Clam Juice and Tomato Catsup
Mix two tablespoonfuls of clam juice with one half tablespoonful of tomato catsup and a little cream. Add a small piece of butter and fill up the glass with hot water. A grating of nutmeg may be added.
A hot savory drink of the sickroom sort — essentially a quick clam bouillon thickened with butter and cream. It comes together in the glass, so the only real technique is getting everything hot without curdling.
- Clam juiceBottled clam juice is still sold and is what this wants; it is strained and salted, so taste before adding anything. Two tablespoons in a full glass is a faint broth — most modern palates will want three or four.
- Catsup of the periodPeriod catsup recipes, especially homemade ones, tended to be thinner, sharper and more heavily spiced with clove and cinnamon than today's product, though sweet commercial bottled ketchup was already common by the early twentieth century. If you are using a modern ketchup, a scant half tablespoon keeps the sugar in check.
- "A little cream"Unspecified, as such recipes usually are. A tablespoon of heavy cream is enough to soften the salt without turning the drink pink and cloudy.
- The hinge: heat, don't boilAdd the hot water to the cream and clam juice rather than the reverse, and keep it below a simmer. Boiled with cream and an acidic catsup, the mixture can break into curds.
- The glassA pre-warmed, heatproof tumbler or a mug. A cold thin glass filled with very hot water is liable to crack.
- Butter"A small piece" is roughly a teaspoon. Stir as it melts to disperse it, though it will tend to rise to the surface as the drink stands.
- YieldOne glass, about 6 to 8 ounces, meant to be drunk immediately while hot. It does not hold or reheat well.
This comes from the invalid-cookery tradition, a fixture of American household books well into the twentieth century, in which savory broths, beef teas and gruels were prescribed for anyone confined to bed and thought to need nourishment without effort. Clam juice earned a place there because it was cheap, available in bottles by the late nineteenth century, and considered restorative in the same vague way beef tea was — salty, warm and easy to swallow. Older manuals had recommended brandy toddies and wine whey for the same patient; this drink offers a comparable warmth with no alcohol at all.