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Bisque of Clams
Open two dozen clams, wash them in their own liquor, and chop very fine. Strain the liquor through two thicknesses of cheesecloth and add it to one quart of water. Put it to boil, adding one tablespoon of chopped celery, one teaspoon of pepper and one teaspoon of parsley. Cook ten minutes, add the clams, and cook five minutes longer. Rub one tablespoon of flour in one tablespoon of butter, add to the bisque, cook three minutes, then press through a purée sieve. Return to the fire, boil up once, and add one pint of thin cream. Serve with small crackers.
A straightforward clam bisque, thickened with a butter-flour paste rather than a proper roux. Two details in the original are worth adjusting: the clams cook longer than they need to, and "one teaspoon of pepper" is a great deal.
- The clamsTwo dozen clams here are most likely hard-shell — littlenecks or cherrystones — shucked raw with their liquor saved, though the recipe does not specify. Expect roughly three-quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter of shucked meat, depending on size. If shucking raw is unappealing, steam them open in a covered pan with a splash of water and strain that liquid as the liquor.
- Cooking timeFive minutes of simmering will toughen chopped clams. Add them at the very end, off the heat or at a bare simmer, and give them a minute or two. They are already opaque and cooked the moment they firm up.
- PepperA full teaspoon of ground pepper in six cups of liquid is aggressive by current taste. Start with a quarter teaspoon and adjust at the end.
- Beurre manié"Rub one tablespoon of flour in one tablespoon of butter" is a beurre manié — cold butter and flour kneaded to a paste and whisked into hot liquid in small pieces. One tablespoon of each gives a barely-thickened soup; double it if you want body.
- The purée sievePressing through a sieve was how you got a smooth bisque before blenders. A few pulses in a blender or a pass with an immersion blender does the same work, and you can leave some texture if you prefer.
- Thin creamPeriod "thin cream" corresponds roughly to today's light or table cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat — richer than modern half-and-half, which will stand in at a pinch. Add it at the end and heat through without boiling, or the salt of the clam liquor may cause it to separate.
- SaltNo salt is called for, presumably because the clam liquor supplies it. Taste after the cream goes in, not before.
- YieldAbout six cups, serving four to six as a first course. "Small crackers" means oyster crackers or plain water biscuits.
Butterick's cookbook appeared in 1911, when the pattern company was extending its authority over the American home from dressmaking into the kitchen, and its soup chapter reflects the era's fondness for the French-derived bisque. Strictly, a bisque was a shellfish soup thickened and enriched with cream — often with pounded shells or rice doing the thickening — and by the turn of the century the name was being applied in American books to creamed shellfish purées generally. Clams were the cheaper choice, abundant and sold by the peck along the Atlantic seaboard. The insistence on straining the liquor through two thicknesses of cheesecloth is the practical heart of the recipe, since sand in a clam soup is the one fault no amount of cream will hide.