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Stewed Clams
Remove about three dozen small clams from their shells, place them with two ounces of fresh butter into a stewpan, one pinch of chives and one pinch of finely chopped chervil, adding one-half breakfast cupful of water, so that it may not be too salt; also a small pinch of pepper and two tablespoonfuls of sifted breadcrumbs, and boil for two minutes. Turn all out on to a dish and serve with the juice of half a lemon squeezed over.
A two-minute clam stew that lives or dies on timing. Everything here is straightforward except the cup measure and the temptation to cook it longer.
- The two minutes are literalShucked clams are done the moment their edges firm and curl. Boiled beyond about two minutes they tighten into rubber and no amount of butter recovers them. Have the dish warmed and ready before the pan goes on the heat.
- Which clams"Small clams" here most likely means littlenecks or cherrystones, roughly 1 to 3 inches across. Three dozen will yield somewhere in the region of a cup and a half of meat, enough for two as a course or four as an appetizer.
- A breakfast cupfulThe breakfast cup was the larger cup of a Victorian breakfast service, variously reckoned at somewhere between 8 and 12 fluid ounces. Half of one is roughly half a cup, give or take; start with less, since the water is there only to temper the clams' own salinity.
- Save the liquorOscar does not mention it, but shucking over a bowl catches the clam liquor, which is the best part of the flavor. Strain it through a cloth to remove grit and let it stand in for some of the water, tasting for salt before you add any more.
- No salt is called forThat is deliberate. Clams and their liquor carry plenty, which is why the water is added at all. Season only at the end, if the lemon has not already balanced it.
- Sifted breadcrumbsThese are dry crumbs, sieved fine, used to bind the butter and clam juices into a light sauce rather than to add bulk. Panko is the wrong texture here; grind dry white bread and pass it through a sieve.
- ChervilFresh chervil has a faint anise note and is still sold at good greengrocers, but it wilts fast and is often unavailable. Flat-leaf parsley with a few tarragon leaves is the usual stand-in; do not substitute dried chervil, which tastes of nothing.
- ServingTurn it out immediately, juices and all, and squeeze the lemon at the table. This is a dish for shallow bowls with bread alongside, and it does not hold or reheat.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and then the Waldorf-Astoria from 1893, and his 1896 book gathers both the hotel's own dishes and the broader repertoire of turn-of-the-century American hotel cookery. Clams were then cheap, abundant and thoroughly local to New York: the beds of Long Island Sound and the Jersey shore supplied the city in enormous quantity, and clam stews, roasts, chowders and broths appear throughout the period's cookbooks and on oyster-house menus at all price levels. What marks this version as a hotel recipe rather than a shore-shack one is the fine herbs, chives and chervil, and the finishing lemon, borrowed straight from the French kitchen where the same treatment would be given to mussels or to a quick meunière. The brevity of the cooking is worth noting on its own: two minutes is a professional's instruction, and it is the detail that keeps the clams tender.