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Hot Clam Bouillon
Two tablespoonfuls American Clam Bouillon, 1 dessertspoonful prepared milk, 5 drops extract aromatic herbs, 5 drops extract white pepper, 1 cupful hot water.
A hot drink built at the soda fountain from bottled concentrates rather than cooked from scratch. Translating it means finding modern equivalents for three proprietary fountain supplies.
- DessertspoonfulA dessertspoon is two teaspoons, midway between the teaspoon and the tablespoon. The measure survived in British and American recipe writing well into the twentieth century and is not the same as a modern tablespoon.
- American Clam BouillonEvidently a proprietary bottled clam broth preparation of the kind sold to fountains and druggists; E. S. Burnham's clam bouillon was one such product. Bottled clam juice is the nearest current equivalent, but it is likely far weaker than a concentrate: taste and adjust rather than assuming two tablespoons will carry a cupful of water.
- Prepared milkProbably a counter preparation of evaporated or condensed milk rather than fresh milk, though the recipe does not say. Unsweetened evaporated milk is the safer match; sweetened condensed will make the drink cloying against the salt of the clam.
- The extractsExtract of aromatic herbs and extract of white pepper were alcohol-based flavouring tinctures from the druggist's shelf, dispensed by the drop from a dropper bottle. Nothing sold today matches them exactly; a small pinch of ground white pepper and a very light hand with celery salt or a herb infusion gets to the same place.
- Heat, not cookingNothing here is simmered. The hot water does all the work, and the drink should be assembled in the cup and served at once. Boiling clam broth with milk in it invites curdling from the salt and acidity.
- YieldOne cupful, one serving. Scaling up is straightforward, but mix the concentrates and extracts first and add the hot water last so the milk disperses rather than streaking.
- SeasoningBottled clam broth is already salty. Season at the end, if at all, and taste before reaching for salt.
Soda fountains did not close in winter, and hot drinks were the trade's answer to the cold months: beef tea, hot malted milk, hot chocolate, tomato bouillon and clam bouillon all appear on fountain lists of the 1900s and 1910s alongside the ice-cream sodas. Clam bouillon in particular sat on the line between refreshment and restorative, sold as a warming, mildly salty pick-me-up in drugstores where the fountain and the prescription counter were the same business. The recipe's dependence on named proprietary products, the bottled bouillon, the prepared milk, the dropper-bottle extracts, is characteristic of fountain manuals generally: the dispenser was not expected to cook anything, only to combine stock preparations quickly and consistently for a customer standing at the counter.