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Roasted Clams
Roasted clams are served at Clam Bakes. Clams are washed in sea-water, placed on stones which have been previously heated by burning wood on them, ashes removed, and stones sprinkled with thin layer of seaweed . Clams are piled on stones, covered with seaweed, and a piece of canvas thrown over them to retain the steam .
Clams, Union League Fry one-half teaspoon finely chopped shallot in one and one-half tablespoons butter five minutes; add eighteen clams and one-half cup white wine. Cook until the shells open. Remove clams from shells and reduce liquor to onethird cupful. Melt two tablespoons butter, add two tablespoons flour, and pour on gradually the clam liquor; add onefourth cup cream and the clams, season with salt and pepper. Refill clam-shells, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve on each a square piece of fried bacon.
Two separate items have run together here: the clambake note, which is a method rather than a measured recipe, and Clams, Union League, a small chafing-dish course of the sort served at gentlemen's clubs. The second is entirely workable in a modern kitchen.
- Which clamsNeither entry names a species. The Union League dish, with shells to refill and top with bacon, suits Atlantic hard-shell clams in the smaller littleneck or cherrystone sizes; eighteen makes a first course for three or four. Clambakes were built on hard- and soft-shell clams alike.
- The hinge: cook only until the shells openPull each clam out the moment it gapes and stop there. Clams left in the pan while the slower shells catch up turn to rubber, and the recipe cooks them a second time in the sauce. Discard any that stay shut.
- SandScrub the shells and let the clams sit in cold salted water for half an hour so they purge grit. The original's wash in sea water is all the cleaning it specifies; strain the finished liquor through a fine sieve or a coffee filter in any case.
- Reducing the liquorA third of a cup is the target, and clam liquor concentrates fast into something very salty. Taste before adding any salt at all — the bacon garnish brings more.
- The sauceTwo tablespoons butter and two of flour is a standard white roux; cook it a minute before the liquid goes in, add the third cup of liquor gradually, then the quarter cup of cream. It should coat the clams thickly enough to sit in a shell without running out.
- Refilling and servingNo baking or browning is specified, so this is served straight from the pan into warmed half-shells. Fry the bacon separately and cut it into squares roughly the width of a shell.
- The clambake note is not a recipe to follow blindIt gives no quantity, no timing and no test for doneness. Wet or porous stones can crack and throw fragments when heated hard, and driftwood and unidentified seaweed are their own problems. Treat the passage as a description of how it was done and use a current set of instructions if you want to build one.
Farmer's shellfish chapter reflects a Boston kitchen where clams arrived by the barrel. The clambake she describes — heated stones, a layer of seaweed, canvas over the top to hold the steam — is the New England shore method, generally traced to Indigenous coastal practice and taken up by nineteenth-century summer visitors, church groups and political outings. The second dish belongs to a different world: the Union League clubs, founded during the Civil War in Philadelphia and New York, whose names attach to a number of dishes in period cookbooks. Shallot, white wine, a butter-and-flour sauce finished with cream and served back in the shell is club cooking of the period in miniature, and its appearance beside a beach fire in the same chapter shows how wide a range the word "clam" covered on one page.