Home › At the Fountain › Clam Broth
Clam Broth
Blend. Use 1 ounce American Clam Bouillon, ½ ounce tomato ketchup or bouillon; fill cup with boiling water; season with salt, pepper and celery salt. A dash of sherry wine in clam bouillon makes a very fine clam punch.
A hot drink from the winter side of the soda fountain, built from a bottled concentrate that no longer sits on most shelves. The substitutions are straightforward, but the proportions need reading as fountain measures rather than kitchen ones.
- What the ounces meanThese read as fluid ounces of fountain measure: 1 ounce is 2 tablespoons, ½ ounce is 1 tablespoon. The "cup" is whatever mug the counter used, so the finished drink is mostly water.
- American Clam BouillonEvidently a branded bottled clam preparation rather than a generic. Bottled clam juice is the nearest modern substitute; it is likely milder, so it may need to be used as more of the liquid, with the added water cut accordingly.
- Tomato ketchup as a seasoningKetchups of the period varied, and some were sharper and less sweet than the modern bottled product; if a tablespoon reads as sugary, tomato paste loosened with vinegar is a closer match.
- "Or bouillon"Ambiguous: the alternative may be a tomato bouillon or a plain meat bouillon. Either reading works, the second giving a meat-and-clam broth rather than a tomato one.
- Boiling water, then stopBlend the concentrates in the mug first, then fill with boiling water, as the recipe directs. It is made one cup at a time.
- Salt with careClam concentrate and ketchup are both salty before you begin. Taste before adding salt at all; the celery salt alone may be enough seasoning.
- The sherryA dash means a teaspoon or two, stirred in after the water so the aroma survives. A dry amontillado or fino suits it better than a cream sherry.
- YieldOne cup, one serving. Scale by the mug rather than making a batch.
Soda fountains sold hot drinks through the winter to keep the counter earning when nobody wanted ice cream, and clam bouillon was among the drinks offered in American fountains of the early twentieth century, alongside beef tea, hot malted milk and hot chocolate. It was pitched as restorative rather than indulgent, part of the same drugstore logic that put the soda fountain next to the prescription counter in the first place, and bottled clam concentrates were advertised to both households and dispensers. The "clam punch" name borrows the language of the bar for a drink served in a mug. Tomato ketchup as a savoury seasoning rather than a condiment was ordinary practice then, and the drink combines clam, tomato and celery salt.