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Cream of Clam Soup
Make same as French Oyster Soup, using clams in place of oysters.
Clam Consommé Wash two quarts clams in shell. Put in kettle with onefourth cup cold water, cover, and cook until shells open. Strain liquor through double thickness cheesecloth, add to four cups consommé, and clear.
Clam and Chicken Frappé Wash and scrub with a brush two quarts clams, changing water several times. Put in kettle with one-half cup cold water, cover tightly, and steam until shells are well opened. Remove clams from shells and strain liquor through double thickness cheesecloth. To one and two-thirds cups clam liquor add two and one-half cups White Stock III, highly seasoned. Cool, and freeze to a mush. Serve in place of a soup in frappé glasses, and garnish with whipped cream.
Three related dishes run together here: a cream soup that borrows its method from the book's French Oyster Soup, a clear clam consommé, and a frozen savory frappé. The hinge in all three is the clam liquor — it carries the flavor and the sand, so straining and salting are what decide the result.
- The cross-referenceCream of Clam Soup gives no method of its own; you need the book's French Oyster Soup, whose method you follow exactly, substituting clams and their steaming liquor for the oysters and oyster liquor.
- Two quarts clams in shellClams were sold by dry measure. Two quarts of hardshells is roughly a couple of pounds, though the piece count varies a good deal with size. Discard any that stay shut after steaming.
- Don't overcook the clamsShells begin gaping in 5 to 8 minutes over high heat with the lid on; pull them the moment they open. Clams held in the pot until every last one yields go tough and stringy, and in a cream soup that is unrecoverable.
- GritThe double cheesecloth is not fussiness. Even scrubbed clams shed sand into their liquor, and it settles. Let the strained liquor stand a few minutes and pour it off the sediment as well.
- "And clear"For the consommé this means clarifying with a raft: beaten egg white (with the crushed shell) stirred into the cold stock, brought slowly to a simmer without stirring, then ladled off through cloth. It is what turns cloudy clam broth into something clear enough to serve in cups.
- White Stock IIIAnother cross-reference to one of the book's white stocks; a good unsalted chicken stock stands in. "Highly seasoned" matters here: the mixture is served frozen, and cold blunts salt, so it should taste slightly too strong warm.
- Freeze to a mushOriginally done in a hand-cranked freezer packed with ice and salt. In a modern freezer, pour into a shallow pan and scrape with a fork every 20 to 30 minutes until it is a coarse, spoonable slush. It will set hard if left alone overnight.
- YieldThe consomme comes to roughly five cups and the frappe to about four, so a few servings each as a first course -- more from the frappe, which was meant as a small glassful rather than a bowl.
Clams stood in for oysters constantly in New England cookery of this period, and Fannie Farmer's blunt "make same as French Oyster Soup, using clams in place of oysters" reflects how interchangeable the two were on the Boston market. The frappé is the more revealing entry: frozen savory courses, served in stemmed glasses between heavier dishes, were a fixture of formal Anglo-American dinners around 1900, and the ice-and-salt freezer that made ice cream possible in the home kitchen made them possible too. The whipped cream garnish on a frozen chicken-and-clam broth reads oddly now, but it belongs to a moment when the same equipment and the same instincts were applied to sweet and savory alike. Clam broth itself was also sold as a restorative tonic in this era, taken hot by the cup, which is part of why a clear clam consommé needed no argument made for it.