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Stewed Soft Clams
Thoroughly wash about three and a half dozen of fresh soft clams so that no sand remains on them after they are opened, lay them carefully on the palm of the left hand, and with the right hand remove the body with care, but nothing more, being cautious not to break it and throwing away all the other parts. When all are prepared place them in a stewpan with one ounce of butter, a small pinch of white pepper, one wineglassful of Madeira wine and two finely-hashed medium sized truffles; place the cover on the pan and cook gently for seven or eight minutes. Break the yolks of three eggs into a bowl, add one pint of sweet cream and beat well for three minutes. Pour this over the clams and toss the saucepan for about three minutes more very gently to thoroughly mix the clams with the cream but not letting the liquor boil again. Neither fork nor spoon should ever be used in mixing them. Pour the whole into a hot dish and serve at once.
A soft-clam stew finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, which is where the whole dish stands or falls. Everything else is straightforward once the clams are cleaned properly.
- Never let it boilThree yolks in a pint of cream can curdle as the pan approaches a simmer. Keep the heat very low after the liaison goes in, aim for a temperature no higher than about 175-180F, and pull the pan off the burner the instant the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
- Why no fork or spoonStirring shreds the cooked clam bodies, which are delicate to the point of falling apart. Swirling the pan moves the sauce without abrading the clams, and it is worth following literally.
- Soft clamsThese are steamers, Mya arenaria, the long-necked East Coast clam, not littlenecks or cherrystones. Three and a half dozen will run somewhere in the region of 3 to 5 lb in the shell depending on size, and the dish would serve perhaps four to six as a first course.
- Cleaning themSoft clams are notoriously sandy. Purge them for an hour or more in cold salted water before shucking, and after shucking peel the dark sheath off the siphon; Oscar's instruction to keep only the body means discarding the neck and the attached membranes entirely.
- MeasuresOne ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. A wineglassful in this period is about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. A pint of cream is 2 cups; "sweet" here means fresh rather than soured, and does not in itself indicate the fat content.
- TrufflesTwo medium truffles is not in most modern budgets. A small quantity of good preserved truffle, or a few finely chopped cooked mushrooms with a little truffle oil off the heat, gets you in the neighborhood without pretending to be the same thing.
- MadeiraUse a dry to medium Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho. The clams themselves need only a couple of minutes; the covered cooking specified runs longer than that.
- ServingThe sauce will not hold. Warm the dish before you add the cream, not after.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf, but as maître d'hôtel he ran its dining rooms and put his name to The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896), a vast compendium that sits somewhere between a professional reference and a monument to Gilded Age New York appetite. This dish shows the house method in miniature: a cheap, abundant local shellfish, the soft clam dug by the barrel along the Atlantic shore and usually eaten steamed from a bucket, is stripped down to its tenderest part and then dressed in Madeira, truffles and an egg-yolk liaison straight out of the French repertoire. The technique itself is classical — thickened with yolks and cream and held below the boil — and the insistence on tossing rather than stirring is the kind of instruction that comes from a working kitchen.