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Clam with Tomato
Pour 1 ounce of American Clam Bouillon into a cup, add ½ ounce American Tomato Bouillon, fill cup with boiling water, season with salt, pepper and celery salt. Whipped cream may also be added.
A hot savory cup from the fountain's winter list, built from two bottled concentrates and boiling water. It comes together in under a minute once you have the right base.
- The measurements are fluid ouncesThe measurements are almost certainly fluid ounces: 1 ounce is 2 tablespoons, ½ ounce is 1 tablespoon. The recipe does not say how large the cup is; if it holds 6 to 8 ounces, the finished drink is mostly water.
- "American Clam Bouillon"The capitalized names point to proprietary fountain concentrates rather than generic products, and they are long gone. The closest stand-ins are a clam broth concentrate or clam base paste; if you use plain bottled clam juice, it is not concentrated, so treat it as the liquid and cut the boiling water back sharply.
- Tomato bouillonMost likely a salted tomato concentrate rather than tomato juice, though the recipe does not describe it. A scant tablespoon of tomato paste with a pinch of sugar approximates it; the drink should read as clam with a tomato edge, not as tomato soup.
- Season after mixing, not beforeBoth concentrates are already salty. Add the celery salt first, taste, then decide whether any plain salt is wanted at all.
- Do not boil the mixtureThe point of the method is boiling water poured onto the bases in the cup. Simmering clam broth for any length of time flattens it and turns the flavor tinny.
- The whipped creamUnsweetened and only lightly whipped, floated on top the way a savory bisque would be finished. A sweetened whip fights the celery salt.
- YieldOne cup, one serving. Multiply the concentrates and keep the water at whatever fills the mug.
Hot drinks were a serious part of the American soda fountain's business in the first decades of the twentieth century, when a fountain had to earn its keep through the winter as well as the summer. Alongside hot chocolate and hot malted milk, fountains sold savory cups: clam bouillon, beef bouillon, tomato bouillon, and combinations of them, dispensed from concentrates kept in bottles under the counter and finished with boiling water from the urn. Clam broth in particular carried a reputation as a restorative and was recommended for invalids and for people who found coffee disagreeable, a claim often repeated in trade literature of the period rather than demonstrated. The capitalized product names here reflect how these books were written: fountain manuals were partly instructional and partly a catalogue of the branded syrups and extracts a proprietor was expected to stock, which is why so many of their recipes now read as assembly instructions for goods no longer made.