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Clam Bouillon
Use 1 ounce of American Clam Bouillon in a cup, fill with hot water, season with pepper, salt and celery salt. A piece of butter the size of a pea stirred into clam bouillon causes a marked improvement. A spoonful of whipped cream improves both the flavor and appearance of the drink.
A hot savoury drink from the winter side of the soda fountain, built from a commercial clam extract that no longer exists under that name. The whole thing is assembly, so the only real decisions are what you substitute and how hot the water is.
- "American Clam Bouillon"Judging by the proportion (one ounce topped up with hot water), this was almost certainly a bottled clam extract or concentrate rather than a broth ready to drink. Plausible modern stand-ins are bottled clam juice, a clam broth concentrate, or a strong clam stock; bottled clam juice is already dilute, so it works better in place of the water than in place of the ounce of extract.
- One ouncePresumably a fluid ounce, i.e. two tablespoons, in an ordinary cup. Filled up with hot water that would come to something like six to eight ounces in all, so a dilution of roughly one part extract to five or seven parts water.
- Water temperatureThe text says only "hot water." Hot but not boiling is the sensible reading for a drink meant to be sipped straight away.
- Celery saltWorth taking seriously rather than skipping: it gives the cup its savoury lift. Since the clam extract and the celery salt are both salty, add the plain salt last and to taste.
- Butter the size of a peaAbout a quarter teaspoon. Stirred in, as the text directs, it blends into the hot liquid and enriches it; the recipe claims only "a marked improvement" without saying why.
- The whipped creamUnsweetened, softly whipped, floated rather than stirred in. Sweetened cream from a modern canister will fight the salt.
- YieldOne cup, as the recipe specifies. Scaling up is straightforward, but it is safer to mix and season cup by cup than to hold a seasoned batch hot.
Hot bouillon was the American soda fountain's answer to winter, when cold drinks stopped selling and the marble counter needed a reason to exist through the cold months. Beef bouillon made from bottled meat extracts appears to have been the standard offering; clam bouillon was its coastal cousin, and it seems to have fit neatly into a period enthusiasm for clam broth as something close to a health tonic, mild, saline and often recommended for invalids and the dyspeptic. The specific product named here was likely one of several trade preparations a fountain would buy by the bottle, which is why the recipe gives a brand and a quantity but no method for making the base. That appears to be characteristic of soda fountain manuals generally: they seem to have been written for a dispenser working from proprietary syrups and extracts at speed, and the skill being taught is proportion and finish, not cooking. The butter and whipped cream are the dispenser's craft showing through, small adjustments that turn a diluted extract into something worth ordering.