No. 366

Clam Broth and Puree

Bouillon de Lucines Orangees et Puree

Put one pint of clams into a saucepan with their own juice and a little water; cover the saucepan and set it on the fire, removing it after the first boil, then drain, and strain the liquor through either a fine sieve or else a napkin; serve it in cups. The clam puree to be prepared as follows: Pound the clams; after they are reduced to a paste, then moisten them with their own liquor, and as much water, and strain through a sieve. For either plain broth or puree, a little milk and butter may be added.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A two-part invalid dish from Delmonico's: a clear clam bouillon, and the same clams pounded and thinned into a puree. Almost everything depends on how briefly the clams see heat.

Remove at the first boilThis is the hinge. Clams tighten and turn to rubber within a minute or two of boiling; Ranhofer's instruction to pull the pan the moment it comes up is not casual. The liquor is fully flavoured long before the meat is cooked hard.
"Lucines orangees"Ranhofer's French name for the clam; in American markets the hard clam is sold as quahog, cherrystone or littleneck. Any hard-shell clam works here.
A pint of clamsThe pint appears to mean shucked clam meats, with their juice added on top of that, as the text says. A pint of meats is roughly a pound, on the order of a dozen cherrystones or two dozen littlenecks. Reserve every drop of juice released during shucking, since that is most of the seasoning.
Straining through a napkinA linen napkin does what a doubled layer of damp cheesecloth or a coffee filter does now: it catches the fine sand that a sieve passes. Clam broth that grits the teeth has simply been strained too coarsely.
Pounding the clamsThe mortar work can be done in a blender or processor, but pulse rather than run it, then push the paste through a fine sieve as directed. The sieving is what removes the tough foot and siphon tissue; skipping it leaves the puree stringy.
SaltClam liquor is already saline, often aggressively so. Taste before adding anything, and dilute with the water rather than seasoning up.
Milk and butterAdd them off the heat and warm gently; salty clam liquor brought back to the boil can curdle milk, and a spoonful of cream is more forgiving than milk.
YieldNot stated. Perhaps a cup or two of clear broth, and a similar quantity of puree once thinned. The instruction to serve it in cups suggests small invalid portions rather than bowls.

A Little History

This comes from the invalid cookery chapter of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. Nineteenth-century sickroom cooking ran on clear restoratives - beef tea, chicken broth, calf's-foot jelly - on the theory that a weakened stomach could absorb the essence of a food without the labour of digesting its substance, which is exactly why the same clams appear twice here, once as strained liquor and once pounded and sieved for a patient thought strong enough for a little body. Clam broth in particular had a wide life beyond the sickroom in this period: hotel bars and soda fountains served it hot in cups as a bracing drink, and it was widely recommended for convalescents along the American coast. Ranhofer's French title dresses a plainly local shellfish in the language of the Delmonico's menu, which is the book's habit throughout.