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Clams à la Grand Union
Clean and dry selected clams, dip in batter, fry in deep fat, and drain on brown paper. Serve on small slices of , and drain on brown paper. Serve on small slices of cream toast, seasoned with salt, celery salt, pepper, and cayenne.
Batter. Mix and sift one cup bread flour, one-half teaspoon salt, and a few grains cayenne. Add gradually twothirds cup milk, and two eggs well beaten.
A straightforward fritter of whole soft clams in a thin egg batter, served over creamed toast. Everything depends on the fat being hot enough and the clams being genuinely dry.
- The clams"Selected" most likely just meant clams picked over for size and quality. Shucked soft-shell clams or cherrystones both work; drain them well and pat them thoroughly dry, or the batter will slide off and the fat will spit.
- Deep fat temperatureThe recipe gives no test or temperature; the bread-cube tests used in cookbooks of the period fall somewhere in the region of 350-375F. Below that the batter absorbs fat; much above it and the coating colors before the clam heats through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Cooking timeOne to two minutes is enough. Clams are cooked the moment the batter is set and golden; longer turns them to rubber, which is the usual fault with this dish.
- DrainingBrown paper meant grocery bag paper. Use a rack set over a sheet pan instead, so the undersides stay crisp rather than steaming against paper.
- Cream toastAn assumed staple in this book and not explained here: slices of toast moistened with a thin white sauce of milk, butter and flour. Make it just before serving, as it goes soggy quickly.
- The batterOne cup bread flour, half a teaspoon salt, a few grains cayenne, two-thirds cup milk and two beaten eggs gives a thin coating batter. Mix it just before frying and let it rest ten minutes; if it thickens on standing, loosen with a spoonful of milk.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield or quantity of clams; this amount of batter will coat something on the order of a pint of shucked clams, but any serving count is a guess.
The clam and oyster chapters catalogue a New England shellfish economy that was still cheap and abundant at the turn of the twentieth century. Dishes named for hotels were a standing convention in American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s, and the Grand Union was a famous Saratoga Springs resort hotel of that era; the attribution is the sort of borrowed prestige that such names carried, rather than a documented recipe from its kitchen. The deep-fried batter-dipped clam here is often said to predate the more famous crumbed fried clam associated with Essex, Massachusetts.