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Clam Force-meat
Follow recipe for Oyster Force-meat, using soft part of clams in place of oysters.
Chicken Force-meat I ½ cup fine stale bread crumbs 1/2 cup milk 2 tablespoons butter White 1 egg 2/3 cup breast raw chicken
Two entries run together here: a one-line variation on the book's Oyster Force-meat, and the start of the Chicken Force-meat that follows it. Both are quenelle-style mixtures, bound with a bread panada and poached in small balls as a soup garnish.
- What force-meat isA finely pounded meat or shellfish paste bound with bread and egg, shaped into small balls and poached. In books of this period such mixtures are usually a soup garnish rather than a stuffing, though this page does not say so.
- "Soft part of clams"The bellies and mantle, not the tough foot or the muscular siphon of a quahog or steamer. Trim away the dark neck skin and the hard adductor muscles; those stay rubbery no matter how long they cook, and they will not pound smooth.
- The oyster base it points toThe parent recipe is not reproduced on this page. If it follows the chicken formula below, the crumbs are cooked with the milk and butter to a stiff paste, cooled, then the pounded shellfish and egg white worked in. Substitute drained soft clam meat for the oysters, measure for measure.
- Making the panadaThe crumb quantity is unclear as printed ('I ½ cup'). No method is given; the standard treatment is to cook the milk, butter and crumbs together, stirring, until the mass leaves the side of the pan in one lump. Cool it completely before adding raw meat or egg, or the white will set in threads.
- Pounding, and the modern shortcutThe original assumes a mortar and a fine sieve. A food processor does it in seconds, but keep everything cold and do not overrun the machine or the emulsion breaks and the balls turn grainy.
- Poaching, not boilingDrop the balls into soup or salted water at a bare shiver, around 180F, for 4 to 5 minutes. A rolling boil tears them apart, and clams held long at a boil tighten and go squeaky.
- Chicken version quantitiesTwo thirds cup of raw breast is somewhere around three to five ounces depending on how finely it is chopped or pounded, roughly one small half-breast. Poach those balls until firm and opaque through, 165F at the center.
- SeasoningThe list gives none. Salt, white pepper and a scrape of nutmeg or a little lemon are all period-appropriate; clams bring their own salinity, so season the mixture, fry a teaspoon of it as a test, and adjust.
- YieldThe chicken quantities make a good many small balls, enough to garnish several bowls of soup; the exact count depends entirely on how large they are rolled.
Force-meat is generally traced to the French farce, a stuffing or pounded paste, and by the late nineteenth century the term covered everything from the filling of a boned bird to the delicate poached quenelles that decorated a clear soup. The technique itself is older and grander than the ingredients: pounding meat with a bread panada and binding it with egg white is the classic quenelle method that cooks of the period absorbed from French cookery manuals and reduced to something a household cook could manage with a mortar and a wooden spoon.