Devilled Clams
Take twenty-five clams; one cup of cream or milk; one tablespoon of butter; two tablespoons of flour; two tablespoons of dry bread crumbs; two eggs (yolks, raw); one tablespoon of chopped parsley; pepper to taste. Drain the clams, and pour one cup of cold water over them to rinse them. Scald the milk or cream, add the flour and butter as in the above recipe, and when the liquid thickens put in the crumbs, the raw yolks and the parsley. Remove from the fire, add the chopped clams, pepper to taste, and salt if needed, fill scallop or clam shells with the mixture, brush them over with beaten yolk of egg, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and brown in a hot oven.
A baked clam gratin built on a thick white sauce, portioned into shells. The original leans on the preceding recipe in the book for the sauce method, so the key steps need spelling out.
- "As in the above recipe"The reference is to the preceding recipe's sauce method, not reproduced here. On the wording given, the milk or cream is scalded first and the tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons of flour worked in to thicken it (a roux cooked briefly before adding the liquid gives the same result). Either way it should be very thick, closer to a binder than a pouring sauce.
- Twenty-five clamsProbably hard-shell clams (quahogs, cherrystones or littlenecks), shucked and chopped, though the book does not specify; yield will vary a good deal with size, so judge by volume rather than count. Canned chopped clams, well drained, can stand in. Save the liquor; a spoonful or two loosens the mixture if it stiffens.
- A hot ovenRoughly 425-450F in modern terms, though the book gives no figures. The filling is already cooked except for the clams, so the oven is mainly browning the crumb top and heating the centre; check after about ten minutes.
- The raw yolksThe recipe stirs the two yolks in with the crumbs and parsley as soon as the sauce thickens, then takes the pan off the fire. Work quickly and do not let it boil afterwards or the yolks will curdle into threads.
- Don't overcook the clamsThe clams go in last, off the fire, and get only the oven's few minutes. Chopped clams simmered in the sauce turn to rubber. This is the hinge of the dish.
- SaltThe instruction to add "salt if needed" is deliberate — clams carry a good deal of their own. Taste the finished mixture before adding any.
- The shellsDeep scallop or quahog shells, scrubbed and boiled before first use. Ovenproof ramekins or a small gratin dish work identically; the shells are presentation, not technique.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; the quantity of filling will fill roughly half a dozen large shells.
"Devilled" in nineteenth-century cookery meant sharply seasoned — mustard, cayenne, black pepper — though this version calls only for "pepper to taste." Baked stuffed clams in the shell are a fixture of the American Atlantic coast, where hard-shell quahogs were cheap and plentiful, and the pattern here — clam meat bound in a thick white sauce, crumbed and browned — is often set alongside the New England traditions of clams casino and stuffies. The Butterick Publishing Company was a dress-pattern house, and its cook book was aimed at the same middle-class household that bought its patterns.