No. 1000

Soft Clams a la Newberg

Lucines Papillons a la Newberg

Warm in a sautoire two ounces of butter, add to it one dozen very fresh soft clams, a little salt, black and cayenne pepper, boil for a few minutes, moving them with care so as to avoid breaking them, moisten with a gill of Madeira and a little veloute sauce (No. 415), add two egg-yolks and a little cream, also a little butter. Warm without boiling, and serve.

CRABS (Crabes).

A species of amphibious crustacean, oblong and wide or broad according to its kind; there is the sea, the fresh water, and the land crab. Generally the tail is bent under the belly, and the head not separated from the body. The body is covered with a hard shell frequently blackish in color; the meat is difficult to digest. The ordinary crabs that are used in New York, either hard or soft shelled are sea crabs.

← No. 999 Soft Clams on Skewers or Hatelets Clams No. 1001 Hard Shell Crabs Baked on a Dish →

For the Modern Kitchen

A one-page Delmonico's preparation that turns steamer clams into a Newberg: brief cooking, Madeira, and an egg-and-cream liaison. The whole dish takes about ten minutes, and nearly all the risk is in the last thirty seconds.

The hinge: never let the liaison boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, hold the pan below a simmer, around 160-175F, and stir constantly. A single boil curdles the yolks and the sauce breaks into grains and liquid.
SautoireA straight-sided shallow sauté pan. Any wide, heavy-bottomed skillet works; you want surface area so the Madeira reduces rather than stews.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. That is a generous amount of Madeira for a dozen clams -- let it bubble down by half before the sauce goes in or the dish tastes raw and winey.
Soft clamsRanhofer means soft-shell clams -- steamers, Ipswich clams, Mya arenaria -- shucked, not the hard littlenecks. Pull off the tough black sheath on the siphon before cooking, and rinse well; steamers hold grit.
"Boil for a few minutes"Too long by modern practice. Shucked soft clams firm up in about a minute in hot butter and turn rubbery after two or three. Cook only until they plump and their liquor runs, then move on.
Velouté No. 415The book's basic white sauce: a pale roux moistened with white stock or chicken stock, simmered and strained. Two or three tablespoons is enough here; a modern cook can substitute a small quantity of well-reduced chicken or fish stock thickened lightly.
SaltingClams, their liquor, and the velouté all carry salt. Season at the end rather than at the start as written.
YieldA dozen clams and a gill of wine serves two as a first course. The recipe itself says only "serve"; Newberg-style dishes of the period were often sent out on toast or in pastry cases, but this entry does not specify.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in his thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the kitchen doing what it did constantly -- taking a house sauce and moving it across the menu. The Newberg treatment of butter, Madeira, cream and egg yolks is generally traced to a lobster dish Ranhofer served after a Delmonico's patron, the fruit shipper Ben Wenberg, demonstrated it in the dining room; the story that the name was scrambled from Wenberg to Newberg after the two men fell out is traditional rather than documented, though Ranhofer's own book prints the dish as "à la Newberg." The French heading, lucines papillons, is a bit of menu-French for the American soft clam, a shellfish with no real place in the Parisian repertoire that Ranhofer had to name before he could dress it. The paragraph on crabs that trails the recipe is the start of the next section of the book, not part of the dish.