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Clam Soup
Prepare the clams same as for steamed clams. Take one quart of the clam liquor, after it has settled, place it in a saucepan, boil, and remove the scum; then add one pint of boiling water, and season with parsley, salt, pepper, cayenne and onion. Put in the hard part of the clams, which have been previously removed, and let it simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes longer, then strain and boil once more, and while it is boiling thicken it with two tablespoonfuls of flour, cooked in one tablespoonful of butter. Pour one pint of hot cream or milk, and the soft part of the clams, and when they are all done place them on a dish, and serve with crackers and pickles.
A clear, lightly thickened clam soup built entirely on clam liquor rather than stock. The whole thing turns on the split between the tough and tender parts of the clam.
- The hinge: two cooking timesThe hard part (the muscular foot and neck of a soft-shell clam) is what simmers fifteen to twenty minutes to give up flavour, and it is then strained out. The soft bellies go in at the very end and need only a minute or two in the hot soup; longer and they shrink to rubber.
- "Prepare same as for steamed clams"Scrub soft-shell clams, steam covered in an inch of water until they gape, then pull the meat, snip off the dark neck sheath, and separate the tough foot from the soft belly. The steaming liquid plus the clams' own liquor is what the recipe calls for; no quantity of clams is given.
- Let the liquor settle, then don't stir itSteamer clams are sandy. Let the liquor stand twenty minutes and ladle or pour it off the sediment, or strain through a coffee filter. Any grit that goes into the pot stays in the finished soup.
- Quantities that are left openNo amounts are given for parsley, onion, salt, pepper or cayenne. A small onion, a few parsley stems and a pinch of cayenne suit a quart of liquor. Season with salt last: clam liquor is already saline and reducing it concentrates that further.
- The roux is flour-heavyTwo tablespoons flour to one of butter is a dry, crumbly paste rather than a smooth roux. Use equal parts butter and flour and cook it two or three minutes before whisking it into the boiling soup, or the soup will taste of raw flour.
- After the cream, no boilingAdd the hot cream or milk off a hard boil and keep the pot just below a simmer. Clam liquor is salty enough that milk can look curdled if it is boiled, and the bellies overcook at once.
- YieldAbout two quarts finished, serving six as a first course or four as a light supper.
- "Serve with crackers and pickles"Plain water crackers or oyster crackers, and small sour gherkins or a dish of pickled cucumber on the side. Crackers and pickles were a common nineteenth-century American accompaniment to clams and oysters, not a garnish for the bowl.
Oscar Tschirky, ma tre d'h tel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, put his name to a very large collection of hotel and household recipes in 1896, and the clam and oyster chapters reflect how central both were to New York eating at the time. Clams came into the city by the barrel from Long Island and the New Jersey shore and were cheap enough to be everyday food while also appearing on the best hotel menus. What is described here is a clam soup in the older style rather than a chowder: no potato, no salt pork, no tomato, just clam liquor extended with water, thickened with a little butter and flour and finished with cream. The separation of the hard and soft parts of the clam reflects a familiarity with soft-shell clams and which piece was there for flavour and which for texture. Crackers and pickles alongside were a conventional accompaniment to clams in American dining rooms of the period, as with a plate of raw oysters.