No. 995

Clams a la Poulette

Lucines Orangees a la Poulette

Poach twenty-four clams, suppressing the hard parts, put them into a sautoir with a pint of poulette sauce (No. 527) and heat them thoroughly; season with pepper, mignonette, nutmeg and lemon juice, and thicken the whole with egg-yolks and fresh butter, adding chopped parsley.

← No. 994 Clams, Philadelphia Style Clams No. 996 Clam Pancakes and Fritters →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short dish that lives or dies on temperature control: once the egg yolks go in, the pan must never simmer again. Everything else is preparation.

The hinge: no boiling after the liaisonEgg yolks whisked into the sauce will curdle above roughly 180F. Pull the sautoir off the heat, temper the yolks with a ladle of hot sauce, return it and swirl in cold butter off the flame.
Poach the clams brieflyClams toughen almost at once. Bring them just to the point where the flesh sets, two or three minutes at most; the liquor is worth reserving. Anything longer and the reheating in the sauce will finish them off.
"Suppressing the hard parts"On a hard clam this means trimming away the tough adductor muscles and the leathery rim of the mantle, leaving the belly and the soft body.
Twenty-four clamsHe means hard clams, the quahog of the heading. Twenty-four cherrystones give roughly a cup to a cup and a half of meat, which with a pint of sauce would stretch to a first course for several; littlenecks are smaller and would give correspondingly less.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, not a saute pan with flared sides. Any wide saucepan does; the point is a broad surface for gentle reheating without deep pockets of sauce that scorch.
Poulette sauce (No. 527)Poulette is generally a velvety white sauce of the velouté family, finished with mushroom liquor, lemon and parsley; see No. 527 for Ranhofer's own version. A modern substitute: a light roux cooked with the reserved clam liquor and a little cream, about a pint in all, thin enough to coat rather than blanket.
MignonetteCoarsely cracked pepper, usually white, sometimes called mignonette pepper. Ranhofer lists it alongside "pepper" without explaining the distinction.
ServingThe book gives no vessel. Shells, toast points and rice or potato borders were all used for dishes of this kind. Serve immediately; it will not hold on a warmer.

A Little History

The heading uses a French market name for the American hard clam, lucine orangee - the quahog, Mercenaria mercenaria. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades and published The Epicurean in 1894, was in the habit of giving native ingredients a French title and then treating them by classical method, which is exactly what happens here: an American shellfish is finished a la poulette, the sauce of egg yolk, lemon and parsley that French kitchens used for brains, tripe, frogs' legs and mussels. The clam section of the book runs to chowders, fritters, pancakes and a Philadelphia style, a sign of how thoroughly the clam had entered restaurant cooking by the 1890s, when barrelled and canned clams were shipping inland.