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Stuffed Clams
Cover bottom of dripping-pan with rock salt. Arrange two quarts large-sized soft-shelled clams on salt, in such a manner that liquor will not run into pan as clam shells open. As soon as shells begin to open, remove clams from shells, and chop. Reserve liquor, strain, and use in making a thick sauce (follow directions for thick White Sauce for Croquettes, p. 266), making one-half rule, and using onefourth cup each clam liquor and cream. Season highly with lemon juice and cayenne. Moisten clams with sauce, fill shells, sprinkle with grated cheese, cover with buttered soft stale bread crumbs, and bake in a hot oven until crumbs are brown.
Crab Meat, Terrapin Style 1 cup crab meat 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 small onion, thinly sliced 2 tablespoons Sherry wine 1/3 cup heavy cream Yolks 2 eggs Salt and cayenne Cook butter and onion until yellow; remove onion, add crab meat and wine. Cook three minutes, add cream, yolks of eggs, salt, and cayenne.
Two dishes share this page: baked stuffed clams and a small chafing-dish crab. Both depend on restraint with heat, and the clam recipe leans on a cross-reference the book expects you to look up.
- The hinge: don't cook the clams twicePull them from the oven the moment the shells crack open, not when they are gaping. They finish under the crumbs, and a soft-shell clam that has been heated through twice turns to rubber.
- Soft-shelled clamsThese are steamers (Mya arenaria), the long-necked New England clam, not littlenecks. Two quarts in the shell is perhaps 2 1/2 to 3 lb; the recipe gives no yield.
- Purge the sandSteamers are notorious grit-holders. Soak them in cold salted water for an hour or two before they go on the salt bed, and discard any that stay open when tapped.
- The rock salt bedCoarse salt spread over the bottom of the pan holds the shells upright so the liquor stays in them; the book does not specify a depth. Cheap kosher or ice-cream salt does the job, and the same bed can be reused for the second baking.
- ShellsSoft-shell clam shells are thin and often break on opening. Scrubbed quahog or scallop shells, or small ramekins, can be used instead.
- "One-half rule" white sauceHalf the rule comes to about 1/2 cup liquid, which is exactly the 1/4 cup each of clam liquor and cream called for here; the butter and flour scale down in proportion from the thick croquette sauce on p. 266, which this page only cross-references. It should be stiff enough to hold its shape on a spoon.
- Hot oven425–450°F. The crumbs need to brown in the few minutes it takes to heat the filling; a slower oven dries the clams before there is any colour.
- Grated cheeseThis would have meant a dry cheese for grating, such as Parmesan or a hard dry American. Pre-shredded soft cheese will go greasy under the crumbs.
- Crab "terrapin style"The yolks go in off the heat or over the barest flame and are stirred until the sauce coats a spoon. Let it boil and it curdles. A cup of crab meat makes about two modest servings.
Both of these are light made dishes of the sort served between the fish and the roast in a formal Victorian dinner, and both show a New England kitchen making a little shellfish go a long way. The rock-salt bed is the same trick still used for oysters Rockefeller: it steadies the shells and holds heat, and it lets the clams open in their own liquor rather than in a pot of water that would dilute it. "Terrapin style" is the more revealing name. Diamondback terrapin stewed with cream, sherry and egg yolks was the great luxury dish of Chesapeake and Philadelphia dining rooms in the nineteenth century, and by the time this edition appeared the terrapin had been hunted toward scarcity and priced out of most households. Cooks kept the sauce and swapped the animal, which is why a cup of crab meat could be served under a turtle's name and everyone at the table understood the reference.