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Clam Fritters
24 soft clams
1 cup milk
2 cups hour
½ cup clam liquor
1 teaspoon baking-powder
2 eggs
½ teaspoon salt
Salt and pepper
Make a batter of flour, baking-powder, salt, milk, clam liquor and well-beaten eggs. Chop two dozen soft clams, season with salt and pepper, add to the batter and drop by tablespoonfuls into deep fat.
A straightforward drop-batter fritter that depends on two things the original does not specify: fat temperature and what to do with the clams' liquor.
- "2 cups hour"A typographical error for 2 cups flour. With 1 cup milk and ½ cup clam liquor plus two eggs, the batter should be thick enough to hold its shape on a spoon rather than run off it.
- Soft clamsSoft-shell clams, also sold as steamers or longnecks. Two dozen shucked yields roughly 1 to 1½ cups of chopped meat. Cherrystones or littlenecks work, but they are firmer and want a finer chop; canned chopped clams, drained with the juice reserved for the ½ cup of liquor, are a reasonable substitute.
- Trim the necksSoft clams have a tough black-sheathed siphon. Slip the sheath off and either discard the tip or chop it very fine, or it will read as gristle in the finished fritter.
- Clam liquorThe liquid released when the clams are steamed open or shucked. Strain it through a fine sieve or cloth first; soft clams hold a great deal of sand. It is salty, so taste before adding the ½ teaspoon of salt to the batter and the further seasoning on the clams.
- Deep fatThe original assumes a cook who knows her kettle. Fry at 365-375F. Below that the fritters absorb fat; above it the outside colors before the batter sets. Three to four minutes, turning once, until deep gold through.
- Batch sizeFry six or eight at a time at most. Crowding drops the fat temperature and the fritters steam rather than crisp.
Clam fritters belong to the coastal cooking of the American Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, where soft-shell clams could be dug from tidal flats in quantity and had to be used quickly. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published this collection for the same middle-class household audience that bought its magazines. The recipe also assumes something modern books cannot: that clams arrive at the kitchen live in the shell, so that the liquor called for in the batter is simply a byproduct of opening them rather than an ingredient to be bought.