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Clam-Juice Broth
After washing the clams in their shells in cold water, place them on a stove in a very thick saucepan, and as they become hot, their shells will open; then carefully pour out the broth, strain it through a closely woven cloth, season to suit the taste, and serve.
Jelly Broth, Palestine Style Make one quart of jelly broth, strain, and keep it hot by the side of the fire. With a vegetable scoop, cut some balls from Jerusalem artichokes, blanch them and put them in a saucepan with a little broth, and boil until they are tender, and the broth is reduced to a glaze. Boil one teacupful of well-washed rice in broth till soft, place the artichokes and rice into a soup tureen, mix one-half teaspoonful of sugar with the broth, pour it over the vegetables, and serve with croutons of fried bread, or sippets of toast.
Two separate items run together in the original text: a bare clam broth made without any added liquid, and a garnished consommé built on it or on a meat jelly broth. Read them as two recipes.
- The hinge: no waterNothing is added to the pan. The clams are heated dry in a heavy saucepan and give up their own liquor, which is why the result is intensely saline rather than dilute. Pull the pan the moment the shells gape, roughly 4-6 minutes for hard-shell clams; a lid and moderate heat will help, though the original specifies only a very thick pan.
- Which clams, and how manyHard-shell clams, littlenecks or cherrystones, suit the method, though the recipe says only "clams." Reckon roughly 4 lb in the shell for something near 2 cups of broth, enough for three or four small cups. Purge them in cold water 20 minutes before scrubbing so the grit settles out; the strained cloth catches the rest.
- Season with care"Season to suit the taste" is unlikely to mean salt here: clam liquor arrives already salty. Taste before adding anything at all; pepper, lemon or a little cream are possible finishes, but the recipe names none.
- Don't waste the clamsThe bodies are cooked once they open and are perfectly good chopped for chowder or a sauce. Returning them to the broth to draw more flavour out of them only toughens them.
- Jelly brothA clear stock rich enough in gelatin to set when cold — made from veal knuckle and shin, or calf's foot. A good unsalted veal or chicken stock reduced until it is tacky on the lips will do; commercial boxed broth will not gel and gives a thin result.
- Jerusalem artichokesSunchokes, not artichokes and not from Jerusalem. Peel, scoop into balls with the small end of a melon baller, and hold them in acidulated water — cut surfaces brown within minutes. Blanch 2 minutes, then simmer in a few spoonfuls of broth until tender, 8-10 minutes, by which point the liquid should be syrupy.
- The riceA teacupful is roughly 3/4 cup. Boiled "till soft" in this period means fully tender and slightly swollen, not al dente; it will keep absorbing broth in the tureen, so add the finished consommé at the table rather than letting it stand.
- Sippets and croutonsSippets are small triangles or fingers of toast; croutons here are cubes of fried bread. Keeping them out of the tureen until serving preserves the crispness.
- YieldThe quart of jelly broth with rice and artichokes serves four as a first course.
Clam broth belonged to an era when it was drunk as much for health as for pleasure — hotels and oyster bars kept it hot, and it was pressed on invalids, late-night diners and the hungover alike, a New York habit that survived into the mid-twentieth century in the form of bottled clam juice. The second soup carries the old kitchen name "Palestine," which in nineteenth-century French and Anglo-French cookery signalled Jerusalem artichokes in any form: the vegetable's English name is generally traced to a corruption of the Italian girasole, sunflower, after which cooks and menu-writers seem to have reasoned their way to Jerusalem and then to Palestine. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf from its opening in 1893, is the name attached to the book, whose entries are terse and assume a cook who already knows what a jelly broth is.