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Hot Clam Juice
Clam juice may be served in the proportion of ½ to 1 ounce to an 8-ounce mug, filling the latter with hot water and serving with a spoon; also giving the patron celery salt, salt and pepper cellars and soda crackers. The clam juice is served more acceptably by adding an ounce of milk, better yet by using half water and half milk and still better by using all hot milk. A small amount of butter causes a marked improvement. Clam juice, like beef tea, must always be served hot. It spoils very readily and must be kept on ice. If a distinction is desired between clam bouillon and clam broth, serve the latter with a spoonful of butter and the former without it. A fine way to keep the names apart is to have your clam juice of clam juice with hot water, clam bouillon is the same with a dash of lemon juice added and clam broth is clam juice mixed with cream or milk. Clam juice with hot water and seasoned well may be known as clam night cap. Clam juice cocktail is made with 1 ounce of clam juice, 2 drams of lemon juice and hot water.
A soda fountain formula rather than a kitchen one: the clam juice is a concentrate held on ice and let down with hot water or milk to order. Everything hinges on the dilution ratio and on keeping the base cold until the moment of service.
- The ratioHalf an ounce to one ounce of clam juice (1 to 2 tablespoons) in an 8-ounce mug is a very light drink by modern taste. Whatever the strength of the house liquor behind this formula, if you are using bottled clam juice sold today you will want considerably more than an ounce per mug; taste as you dilute.
- DramsTwo drams of lemon juice in the cocktail means fluid drams: one eighth of a fluid ounce each, so a quarter ounce, about 1½ teaspoons total. Not the weight dram.
- Do not boil itClam liquor turns flat and faintly metallic when it boils, and the milk versions may curdle, especially where lemon juice is involved. Heat to steaming and no further.
- Season lastBottled clam juice is already salty, often 500 mg of sodium or more per serving. The celery salt and salt cellar set out for the patron were for a house-made liquor of unknown strength; taste before adding anything.
- The butterA teaspoon of cold butter stirred in at the end gives the drink body and rounds off the brine. Add it off the heat and stir until it disappears, or it will sit in a slick on top.
- Keeping itThe warning about spoiling is sound. Opened bottled clam juice keeps refrigerated for a few days at most; house-made clam liquor should be treated like any fresh shellfish stock and used within two days or frozen.
- The nomenclatureThe passage contradicts itself, first distinguishing bouillon and broth by the butter and then by lemon juice and milk. Neither usage was fixed in the trade. Take the second set as the working one: bouillon gets lemon, broth gets milk or cream.
- YieldOne 8-ounce mug per person, served with soda crackers. As written it is a savoury hot beverage, not a soup course.
Hot drinks were a serious part of the American soda fountain's winter trade, and the fountain's hot-water and hot-milk taps kept a bar busy in the months when nobody wanted ice cream. Clam broth sat alongside beef tea, hot malted milk and hot chocolate in that lineup, and like beef tea it was sold with a faint suggestion of the invalid's tray about it: nourishing, saline, easy on a weak stomach. New England clam liquor had long been drunk on its own, and hotel and oyster-bar clam bouillon was a familiar item in the Northeast by the turn of the twentieth century; the fountain trade simply took the drink over and standardised it into ounces per mug. The elaborate naming here, with the same base sold as juice, bouillon, broth, night cap or cocktail depending on a dash of lemon or a splash of milk, is characteristic of fountain manuals, which taught dispensers to build a long menu from a short list of syrups and stocks.