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Steamed Clams
Scrub the shells of some clams well in water; then place them in a saucepan without any water, place them over the fire, and cook until the shells open. Remove the clams with a skimmer, pour the liquor into a jar and let it settle. There will be no use in straining the liquor through the finest strainer, but a piece of linen may be used, or if allowed to settle, and care be taken not to move the sediment, the water can be poured off. Remove the clams from their shells, pulling off the thin skin round the edge, and cutting off the whole of the black end with a pair of scissors. Plunge each clam into a small quantity of the liquor, and if at all tough cut that part through. When the water has settled pour it into a saucepan, add the clams and make it hot, though do not allow it to boil. Take out the clams and serve with brown bread and butter, toasted crackers, or on pieces of buttered toast.
A dry-steam method that treats the clam liquor as the point of the dish rather than a by-product. The one thing to hold on to is the final heating: the liquor must be hot and never boil, or the clams tighten into rubber.
- Which clamsThe trimming described — pulling the skin from the rim and snipping off the black end — is soft-shell clam work (steamers, Mya arenaria), not hard-shell littlenecks. About 1 lb per person in the shell for a first course, 2 lb for a main.
- Purge before scrubbingOscar's scrub removes outside mud but nothing inside. Rest the clams 20-30 minutes in cold salted water (roughly 1/3 cup salt per gallon) so they spit sand, lift them out rather than pouring, then scrub.
- No water in the panThis is deliberate and worth respecting. The clams release their own liquor as they open; adding water only dilutes it. Use a heavy pan with a tight lid over medium heat, 5-8 minutes, until the shells gape.
- Discard the closed onesThe original assumes all will open. Any clam still shut after the rest have gaped should go in the bin, as should any with a broken shell or one that stayed open and limp before cooking.
- Settling the liquorThe instruction that fine straining is useless is correct — silt passes straight through mesh. Let the liquor stand 15-20 minutes, then decant slowly off the sediment, or pour it through a doubled coffee filter or a square of muslin.
- The "black end"This is the dark sheath covering the siphon, or neck. Snip it away as directed; the neck itself is edible. Modern practice usually leaves the black-tipped skin on and lets diners strip it at the table, so the trimming here is a hotel refinement rather than a necessity.
- ReheatingBring the strained liquor to about 160-170F — steaming, with no bubbles breaking. Slip the clams in for a minute at most simply to warm them through. Boiling at this stage undoes everything.
- ServingServe the hot liquor alongside in cups for dipping and drinking, with melted butter if you like. The brown bread is most likely Boston-style steamed brown bread; a dense wholemeal loaf stands in well.
Steamed clams belong to the New England shore tradition that the Waldorf kitchen drew on for its American dishes, and the soft-shell clam — the steamer, dug from tidal flats along the northeastern coast — was cheap and plentiful in the New York market of the period. What marks this out as a hotel version rather than a beach one is the fastidiousness: the shore method was simply to steam the clams and set the pot on the table, while here each clam is peeled, snipped and rinsed in its own broth before being warmed and plated on toast. The suggested accompaniments — brown bread and butter, toasted crackers — are the same ones that turn up beside clam and oyster dishes throughout late nineteenth-century American cookbooks.